Shadows of My Mind
by WandererInTime
Summary: The Doctor's life hangs in the balance. Charlie must find a way to save him, as the Time Lord relives his darkest days. (Twelfth Doctor Adventures 5)
1. Save the Doctor

**Author's Notes**

 **Part 5 in the Twelfth Doctor Adventures, picking up where _Web of Doom_ left off.**

* * *

 _ **The story so far...**_

 **UNIT have warned the Doctor about Charlie Drake – and they may have had a good reason. Poisoned after an encounter with a deadly alien creature, the Doctor's on the verge of death.**

* * *

Charlie was alone in the TARDIS with the Doctor.

The Doctor had collapsed to the floor, wracked with pain, struggling for his last breaths.

He was helpless. Charlie had no idea what to do – and he couldn't fly the TARDIS. The Doctor had seemed so confident that something was going to happen to him, which would magically save him. And it hadn't happened, and it seemed that the Doctor had lost.

He was dead.

"Charlie?" a familiar voice spoke softly into his ear.

Charlie reeled back in shock, stunned to see a flickering holographic figure crouching next to him. A cold wave of dread threatened to stop his heart, too.

The figure's gaze locked upon him, the eyes captivated – just to observe him.

"We can still save him, Charlie," the boy assured him.

"Nate?" Charlie breathed in disbelief.

The image of Nate's slightly swollen lips curled, and the holographic figure smiled a brilliant, boyish grin.

"You remember me," Nate muttered excitedly.

Charlie shook his head, willing himself not to believe what he was seeing.

Nate glided over to the console, and began flicking switches. His transparent hands passed through the controls – not quite touching, but somehow moving them. The TARDIS shuddered. They were in flight.

"How…?" Charlie managed to croak.

Nate perched on the edge of the console, and rubbed his brow.

"There are protocols for this kind of thing," he explained, "I can fly myself when I need to."

Charlie raised himself to his feet, aware of the floor falling away from him as he did so. He swallowed, his throat rough.

"You. You're not him," Charlie uttered quietly. "So you're the TARDIS?"

"The interface program."

"Who… why…?"

"Good question," he mused, nodding, and glancing over the room. "Why do I look like this?"

Nate threw his arms up, dismissively.

"It's the only form that can _elicit a response_ from you."

He paused, and looked down at the metal grate beneath him, as if deep in thought.

"Elicit…?" he pondered. "I never used that word before-"

"Stop it!" Charlie spat. "You're _not_ him. Don't you dare…"

His insides were volcanic.

"Sorry," Nate muttered, smiling at him apologetically. "But I do need your help."

Charlie hesitated.

"What do you want me to do?"

"I need you to save the Doctor," Nate said simply. "Because he's going to die. The Arachnid venom is destroying his regenerative abilities."

Nate slid down from his perch on the console, and walked over to Charlie. His pixelated eyes were level with his own, and burning intensely.

"It's not his time yet. This is not the moment he falls. You need to save him."

"How do I do that?" Charlie asked.

"You'll have to find him, and bring him back from death. From extremis…"

"Okay," Charlie said, resignedly. It wasn't an explanation, but there was nothing else he could do.

Nate pointed upwards. A compartment in the ceiling swung open, and a tangle of cables dropped from the opening, falling through Nate's form.

The hologram took a step back, and indicated a headset amongst the black wires. The headset was a metallic structure, shaped like headphones, with a third arm, each arm featuring strange circular etchings.

"Put that on," Nate suggested.

Charlie slipped the headset over his cranium. Nate gestured towards two silver beads, each connected to a cable.

"Place the electrodes over the Doctor's temporal bones."

Nate mirrored Charlie's crouching position, and watched Charlie study the Doctor's body, clueless as to the location of the Doctor's 'temporal bones'.

Nate placed his fingers in the correct spots, and Charlie moved the electrodes over, where they seemed magnetically attracted to the Doctor's forehead.

As soon as he had connected the electrodes to the Doctor's head, he felt a strange tingling sensation on the back of his neck.

"You don't have long," Nate quickly explained. "Your mind is not yet compatible with the Doctor's. I'll alter the relevant neural pathways."

"Wait, what?" Charlie interjected. He was cut short, as an intense burst of pain coursed through his head.

"I should warn you," Nate continued, as Charlie opened his mouth to yell - but he made no sound. "The path you're about to take is a very dangerous one."

Charlie began to lose consciousness. Nate's last words rang in his ears:

"Save him. Save the Doctor."

The floor rushed up to meet Charlie's nose, and knocked him out cold.


	2. The Dream Death

There was no way of telling how long he'd been out for, but it was clear when Charlie woke up that it had been a long time. His thoughts were a little fuzzy, but he immediately sat up, and checked the Doctor's condition. Thankfully, he seemed to be breathing.

Charlie pulled the headset off, and let it swing from the ceiling for a moment – before it was reeled back in by the TARDIS.

"Doctor?" Charlie muttered.

The Doctor's eyes snapped open, and he glared at Charlie for a second, scrutinising him.

"Ah, well done!" he called brightly, sitting bolt upright, and clapping Charlie heartily on the shoulder.

Charlie shrugged. "What did I do?"

The Doctor frowned. "No idea. But it seems to have worked."

He leapt to his feet, and began to pace around the console, patting various parts of his anatomy.

"Yep. All still there. Legs, liver, hearts…" the Doctor frowned, peering intently at Charlie, examining each of his eyes carefully. "Reminds me of a restaurant I visited once. Didn't stay long."

Charlie took a step back as the Doctor rushed past him, and flew up the stairs, plucking a mirror from a coffee table.

The Doctor glared at his own reflection, a mixture of horror and astonishment slapped across his features.

"Ah," he breathed.

"What?" asked Charlie, quickly rushing up the stairs to join him.

"It's my face…" the Doctor muttered, somewhat disappointed.

Charlie managed a smile, astounded by the Doctor's grasp of household objects.

"Yes…"

"No, look," the Doctor exclaimed, thrusting the mirror at him.

Charlie looked down at his own reflection for a moment. His eyes were tired, and frustrated. He tore himself away, unable to meet his own gaze.

The Doctor was gawking at him earnestly.

"What am I looking at?" Charlie shrugged.

The Doctor frowned, glaring down at the mirror, and back at him again. His eyebrows shot up in revelation.

"Oh no, sorry, I forgot - they don't work like that."

The Doctor snatched the mirror back from Charlie, and returned it.

"I don't…" Charlie muttered, watching the Doctor carefully straighten the table. Which, he realised, was a pointless gesture, as the contents of the table were always the first to hit the floor whenever the TARDIS ran into a spot of turbulence.

"I don't understand what you're trying to say."

"Look!" the Doctor roared, pointing at his eyebrows. "It's my face."

Charlie regarded the Doctor's features with some awkwardness. He wasn't wrong.

He could appreciate that the Doctor had almost died; perhaps the shock had finally sent him over the edge?

"It's still the same. I didn't change!"

"What were you expecting?"

"Regeneration!"

Charlie shook his head. He had absolutely no idea what the Doctor was talking about.

"I died," the Doctor stated. "When I die, I regenerate – all the cells are renewed, and my entire body changes." He gesticulated wildly, and Charlie took a defensive step back, to avoid the Doctor's windmilling arms.

"Which means…" the Doctor muttered, pausing to stare intently into space.

"What? What does it mean?" Charlie asked, struggling to keep up.

"I didn't die…"

"Right."

"Or…" the Doctor continued, drawing out his conclusions so slowly, it was almost painful trying to follow it.

"Or what?" Charlie encouraged.

The Doctor frowned, something on the TARDIS control panels catching his attention.

"Are we in flight?" the Doctor asked, glaring at the pulsing time rotor.

"I think so," Charlie answered quickly. "Or what? What else does it mean?

"How is that possible?" the Doctor pondered, dashing back down the stairs, and bending over the TARDIS console, examining the levers closely.

"I don't know!" Charlie retorted.

"Did you set the controls?" the Doctor span around, interrogating him.

Charlie shook his head. "I can't fly the TARDIS. I think… I think the TARDIS set them itself."

"The TARDIS?"

Charlie nodded.

"Ah…" the Doctor breathed in realisation. "The TARDIS took off by itself. Of course."

The Doctor nodded, satisfied with his explanation.

Charlie realised too late that the Doctor was merely being sarcastic. The Doctor grabbed him by his hoodie, and peered at him with a disapproving stare.

"That's impossible," he growled.

Charlie looked down at the Doctor's fingers, curled tightly around the fabric of his top.

"That's what I saw."

The Doctor nodded slowly, and inhaled sharply through his nose.

"There's something strange about you. Something I've missed," the Doctor mused.

He rubbed his chin thoughtfully.

"Are you still pregnant?"

Charlie peered at the Doctor for a moment, unsure if he had heard correctly.

"I'm sorry; did you just ask if I was pregnant?"

"Yes, don't you remember? The Arachnid Queen made you her… um. How should I say… consort?" the Doctor reminded him, discreetly pulling the sonic screwdriver out of his pocket.

Charlie's stomach lurched as he recalled the encounter.

"Oh, yeah, I forgot, because you…"

"Because I died."

The Doctor finished scanning him with the screwdriver, and examined the readings.

"Congratulations," the Doctor grinned.

"What?!" Charlie responded in alarm.

"Don't worry – you're clean. Your immune system destroyed the spiderlings before they hatched."

"Thank goodness for that," Charlie breathed, perching on the TARDIS console to steady himself.

"So the real question is: how am I still alive?"

"I have no idea," Charlie replied, after a moment of thought.

"No, wait, no it isn't," the Doctor growled, his hands gesticulating in frustration, until finally, an index finger was pointed directly at Charlie's nose.

"How did we get out?"

Charlie peered down at the Doctor's finger. "Out?"

"Of the Arachnid lair? What happened to the Arachnid Queen? Because," the Doctor turned on his heel, and paced around the TARDIS console, "I calculated our chances of survival at less than five percent. There was no way we could have stopped the Queen unless some… _miracle_ happened."

The Doctor stopped abruptly, having come full circle, and glared at Charlie.

"So what _did_ happen?"

Charlie shook his head. "I don't know. All I can remember is… the Arachnid Queen was destroyed. You defeated her… somehow. I think. I…" Charlie shrugged uselessly, "I _don't_ remember."

He really couldn't think what had happened. It was all a blur. Everything had been eclipsed by the Doctor collapsing, and he couldn't for the life of him remember how the Arachnid Queen had been defeated.

"Okay," the Doctor nodded. "Fine. Now, the next question is: how _am I_ still alive?"

"Uh…"

"Because clearly, I didn't die," the Doctor stated, pointing down at his living, breathing figure. "Or…"

"Or?"

"I'm still dying," the Doctor finished, gazing vacantly over Charlie's shoulder.

Charlie's stomach churned. He recalled the TARDIS' words – _save the Doctor._ But what did that mean? What could he do?

"It's impossible…" the Doctor muttered, examining the backs of his hands, "my hearts have stopped. But I still have a pulse…"

He reached out, his fingers gently probing Charlie's jugular vein.

Charlie threw him a confused stare. What was the Doctor _doing?_

"It's your pulse."

"Yeah…?" Charlie was very conscious of his twitching facial muscles.

"We're sharing a pulse," the Doctor explained, his eyes narrowing, "Has the _TARDIS_ done this? Leeching your life force to keep us both alive?"

"I… guess so?"

"She must know that's incredibly dangerous. We have… hours before your heart burns out. It can't possibly sustain both of our lives."

"Wait…" Charlie shook his head, trying to take it all in. So they were _both_ dying, now?

"Yes, we're both dying, but… Oh!" the Doctor breathed, his eyes widening.

"What?"

"Conjecture!" the Doctor expostulated, thrusting an index finger in the air. He stalked over to the blackboard, where he began scribbling notes in white chalk.

"So, there's this theory," the Doctor explained, at a whirlwind speed, "that after you die, you have seven minutes of brain activity left. And in those seven minutes, you experience a dream world, where you live your entire life over again."

"So you think…?" Charlie began.

"You can never be sure if you're still alive," the Doctor continued, "or in those seven minutes, replaying your life…"

"Wait, what?" Charlie spluttered.

They had just escaped a traumatic ordeal, and it was still too soon, in his opinion, to be posing philosophical conundrums. Why was the Doctor still testing him with all these questions, when there was a very strong possibility that he was dead, or dying?

"The obvious conclusion is that my life's about to flash before my eyes," the Doctor broke off his intense glare with a shrug, "Still, that gives us loads of time to think what to do next. And I mean _loads_ of time…"

"Hold on." Charlie squeezed his forehead, as he reached the unthinkable conclusion. "We're inside your _mind?_ "

"We're dreaming," the Doctor stated, waving his finger at the space around him. "We're in a dream world. Constructed by the TARDIS, taking place in my head… and you're along for the ride, too."

The Doctor fixed him with another glare.

"But you've been dreaming for a long time, Charlie."

"I'm sorry?" Charlie responded, taken aback. "What's that supposed to mean?"

The Doctor was already at the TARDIS doors. Outside, was nothing – a wall of sheer darkness.

Charlie shook his head, and rushed over to the Doctor's side.

"Why are there no stars?" Charlie asked.

"Because we're not in space," the Doctor answered quietly.

"Then where are we?"

"Nowhere."

"But I can see things moving."

Even though everything was black, Charlie could make out shapes swirling in the void. The reflection from the light of the TARDIS the only indication of their dancing forms.

"They're thoughts," the Doctor stated. "Thoughts inside my head."

"Thoughts?" echoed Charlie.

"Thoughts; dark and despairing…" the Doctor muttered, his tone grave. "A place inside the mind without light, and so without hope."

As Charlie stared into the darkness, he felt a stirring in his gut. The feelings of despair that the Doctor described, hollowing him. And he felt afraid.

But the worse part was, the longer he stared, the more it felt like something was staring right back.

The Doctor shook his head. "This is terrifyingly dark. I had no idea…"

He slammed the TARDIS doors shut, and leaned back against them for a moment, his restless eyes betraying his disquiet.

"We need to get out."

He raced back to the console, his eyebrows knotted, and began to set the controls.

"Where?" Charlie asked.

"Anywhere!"

The engines heaved, like the TARDIS was sick.

The control room shook, and Charlie staggered, almost losing his balance. He tripped over, and slammed into the railings. He grabbed onto it, the metal pressing against his chest, constricting his breathing, as the TARDIS tried to rattle his bones from his body.

He glanced over at the Doctor, furiously grappling with the controls. But the console was going wild. Levers were flipping of their own accord, and there was a dial spinning so fast, Charlie thought it might start smoking. The Doctor tried to grab hold of it, but it burned his fingers, and he pulled away, clenching his fist.

Finally, the noise subsided, and the TARDIS landed with a resounding thump. The doors swung open.

Charlie let go of the railing, and stood up, looking over to the Doctor. He was about to speak; question what had happened. But there was something about the Doctor's expression that made him uneasy, so he remained silent.

The Doctor pulled the TARDIS scanner to him, and glared at it. The display showed nothing: bursts of meaningless, snowy static.

His eyes flicked towards Charlie in confusion, then to the open doorway.

The Doctor ventured towards it, seemingly unsure of himself; taking deliberate, precise steps.

Charlie joined him, and peered outside, wondering where they had landed.

Beyond the TARDIS doors, there seemed to be a dingy copse of trees. There was a powerful odour of metal, and sweat.

"Where are we?" asked Charlie, turning to the Doctor.

The Doctor wasn't listening. There was a horrified expression across his face. His mouth was moving silently, as if trying to sound out a word.

"Doctor?" Charlie pressed him, tapping the Doctor's arm lightly. He was worried.

What had the Doctor seen amongst the trees? What had caused such dread to consume him?

He looked out again, but he couldn't see anything. No animals. No people. No life at all. It was still.

"No…" the Doctor whispered, his voice quivering in alarm. "We can't be here. We can't!"

* * *

 **Author's Notes**

 **The original premise for this adventure was a kind of inverse of _Into the Dalek._**

 **The Doctor and Charlie are venturing – perhaps literally, perhaps metaphorically – inside the Doctor's mind.**

 **As such, this might get a little weird as the Doctor gets lost in his thoughts, his memories… and his nightmares.**


	3. My Darkest Days

The Doctor's lip was trembling, and his eyes darted around like a frightened deer.

Charlie noticed his hands ball into fists, the Doctor's fingers flexing uncomfortably.

The Doctor tore himself away from the world outside, and began wrestling with the controls.

Nothing moved. Nothing would budge. No matter how much the Doctor tried, no matter how hard he pounded on the console, the TARDIS controls were fixed. They were glued in place.

They weren't leaving here any time soon.

The Doctor hung his head, and slammed his fist into the console one more time.

Charlie waited patiently, watching anxiously as the Doctor fumed in silence.

"What's out there?" Charlie asked after a while – when he was sure it was safe for him to speak. "Where are we?"

The Doctor looked at him. His eyelids were heavy, showing the weight of centuries of horrors.

Nowhere good, Charlie answered for him.

The Doctor dragged himself back over to the door, and Charlie was struck with a feeling. It was a feeling he'd had as a child.

When you hear a noise in the middle of the night, when you're supposed to be asleep, so you tiptoe over to the window and pull the curtain back. There's that moment, just before you reach out, when you dread what you will see.

Usually, it's nothing. But not always.

And the Doctor stepped outside.

"Where are we?" he repeated Charlie's question. "We're a long way from home."

He took a few steps, listening to the crunch of rotten bark underfoot.

The TARDIS doors swung shut behind them with a slam, and Charlie jumped.

The Doctor looked back, alert.

"We're not going back," he said.

They looked back at their only way out. It was sealed.

Charlie half expected the TARDIS to vanish, but it didn't. It was like they were being taunted; shown a locked exit.

The Doctor pulled out the sonic screwdriver, wielding it ahead of him like a weapon, and began to pick his way through the forest.

"No," the Doctor murmured, tentatively feeling the cracks in one of the trees.

"What is it?"

"It's like we're actually here," the Doctor groaned. "I can't tell whether it's real or not."

"It can't be real, can it?" Charlie assumed. "We're inside your… mind?"

Charlie pointed at their surroundings.

"So none of this is real," Charlie tried to reassure them both. It didn't make him feel any better, though. "Right?"

"Just because it's inside my head doesn't mean it's not real," the Doctor said.

The Doctor's eyes were glaring, and quite difficult to face, so Charlie examined his trainers instead.

The Doctor's words triggered a thought. It reminded him of something his therapist had said. Just because you couldn't see what was going on in someone else's head, didn't mean it didn't exist. There was no way of telling what events other people had faced, what battles they had fought. What battles they might still be fighting.

He hadn't understood that in the same way until now: when he was actually standing inside someone else's mind.

"Sorry," Charlie mumbled.

The Doctor raised his eyebrow for a moment, appearing to read his thoughts.

They kept walking, although Charlie wasn't sure what direction they were heading in. Every inch of the forest looked exactly the same.

"You've been here before?" Charlie asked.

"Yes," the Doctor answered. "We're inside a memory."

His eyes darkened, and he grumbled: "And not a very pleasant one."

"Why not?" Charlie wondered, dreading the Doctor's reply.

"Because I lose."

"You lose? What do you mean?"

"I couldn't save anyone. I couldn't help. I only made things worse," the Doctor moaned. He sounded pained, like he didn't want to divulge any of this. He didn't want to relive the memory – but he was.

"But you're the Doctor. You always make things better?" Charlie almost pleaded with him.

"Not this time," the Doctor said quietly.

Charlie shook his head in disbelief. Why was the Doctor so nervous? What could possibly have happened for the Doctor to be so afraid?

"Why are you so scared?" Charlie blurted, gesticulating wildly. "You're positively… radiating with terror. Brimming with fear! More scared than a Tivolian trapped alone in the dark on an alien planet!"

He stopped, catching his breath back.

"What was that?" the Doctor asked, peering at him in bewilderment.

Charlie pursed his lips together, trying to replay what he had just spurted. It was strange – he couldn't think why he had said all that – in the way he had said it. It was like he had completely lost his mind for a second.

"I don't know," he muttered. "I don't even know what a Tivolian is."

On reflection, it was the sort of nonsense the Doctor usually spouted. In fact, his outburst had been so incredibly Doctor-ish, it had even taken the Doctor by surprise.

"What did you do?" the Doctor asked, pointing at him. "You didn't…?"

The Doctor sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose to stem the flow of frustration.

"You didn't let the TARDIS rewire your brain, did you?"

"Um… that might have happened…?" Charlie muttered.

"Oh, no… that's incredibly dangerous! Are you an idiot?" The Doctor frowned. "No, don't answer that – you'll only get it wrong."

"You were dying! It was the only way to save you," Charlie argued, stopping in front of the Doctor, trying to meet his eyes.

The Doctor didn't stop, and merely brushed past him, as he continued trudging through the forest.

"Stupid idea," he grumbled under his breath.

"You still haven't answered my question," Charlie called after him.

"I'm not going to," the Doctor growled back.

"Why are you scared?" Charlie demanded, glaring at the back of the Doctor's head.

The Doctor turned back, and his expression was grave.

"You don't want to know."

"Just tell me! Tell me why you're scared. Because it scares _me_ that _you're_ scared!"

Charlie was yelling, now. But the Doctor kept on walking.

"I'm supposed to save you. But how can I do that if you're not even going to listen to me?"

Charlie shrugged, and he felt the back of his neck twinge, like it always did when he was struggling to contain his anger.

"I'm living this memory too, you know! I'm stuck inside your head, right here with you. You've been here before, but I have _no idea_ what to expect. I don't know where we are. I don't know what's going to happen. But you do! Just _tell me!_ "

The Doctor stopped, and looked back, resignedly.

"I suppose…" he agreed.

With a rather heavy sigh, the Doctor took a seat on an old, fallen tree trunk.

Charlie couldn't help thinking that the Doctor looked exhausted. His watery grey eyes were almost sunken into his skull.

"There isn't much I can tell you," the Doctor began. "It happened exactly like this. I land the TARDIS – exactly where it was. And then I walked through the forest."

He gestured towards the expanse of trees all around them.

"It didn't take me long to work out this was a colony world, millions of light years from Earth. An uninhabitable planet, terraformed to sustain human life."

"You can tell that?" Charlie queried.

The Doctor nodded. "Some of these trees are indigenous to Earth. They wouldn't grow anywhere else."

"And what happened next?"

"I found people," the Doctor murmured.

He didn't seem keen to elaborate, but Charlie pushed him further.

"And then what?"

"Something happened," the Doctor sighed. "Something was affecting the population. Changing them. Some… force."

The Doctor shook his head, staring at the patterns running through the fallen bark.

"Whatever it was, it took the children first. Every single child."

The Doctor's voice almost cracked. It was clearly a painful memory, and Charlie hated himself for asking the Doctor to continue – but he was here too. If this was a painful memory for the Doctor, it was going to be a painful experience for him now.

"Before I knew it, everyone was dead," the Doctor said, simply. "The entire human population was wiped out."

"How?" Charlie asked, "What caused it?"

"I don't know," admitted the Doctor. "I never found out."

"How come?"

The Doctor shrugged, shaking his head despondently. "I ran away."

The Doctor was ashamed to utter the words, and Charlie frowned, struggling to picture the scene. He couldn't imagine the Doctor running away – not from people who needed his help.

The Doctor looked up at him, his eyes revealing his conflicted thoughts.

"I know what you're thinking. It's one of my many regrets," the Doctor chewed on his lip, lost in fantasy. "I always wished I could go back. Do it right, and… stop whatever did this."

His eyebrows rose, full of hope.

"If I can work out what happened, maybe I _can_ stop this."

Charlie's frown deepened, his other features joining in with his confusion.

"You said we couldn't change time. You wouldn't even let _Alan Turing_ change time."

"This isn't actually happening," the Doctor reminded him. "This is just a construct inside my head."

"But then you're just…" Charlie struggled to argue with the Doctor. "You'll just be misremembering what really happened."

"Very probably," the Doctor admitted. "But think about it: if I can work this out, I can stop it from ever happening again."

"But we don't have time!" Charlie urged.

"Time?" snapped the Doctor. " _Time?_ Time doesn't matter in a place like this!"

"We need to get out of here," Charlie said, throwing his arms up in frustration.

The Doctor nodded. "Oh, I agree. The problem is: I have no idea how. I certainly can't wake up. You told me yourself – I'm dying. I _won't_ wake up."

"Then what do you think we need to do?" Charlie asked, resignedly.

"I just have this gut instinct… I need to do this."

The Doctor stood up, defiant, his determination revitalised.

"Do you trust me, Charlie?"

Charlie hesitated for a second, looking into the Doctor's ancient eyes. He was reminded of the moment he first met the Doctor, saving him from the Wraith. He had been compelled to trust him then. Despite all they had been through, that trust had never truly wavered.

"Yeah."

"Then we need to run," the Doctor grinned.

Charlie's eyes widened in dismay. "Of course we do."

The Doctor took off, speeding through the forest. He hardly registered his surroundings, relying on his memory of the way through the woods.

Charlie was only just able to keep up, as the Doctor leapt over logs, and ducked under low branches, twisting and turning amidst the trees.

Charlie couldn't tell how far they ran. His lungs were desperate for air, and his legs were taking the punishment of his exertion.

He really ought to be used to this by now, he reflected.

* * *

They finally stopped running when an old house appeared, seemingly out of nowhere.

It was a rickety two storey affair, wooden slats tracing the contours of the building, interrupted only by grubby windows and a shabby door. The red paint was peeling, hinting at several different colours beneath.

A veranda projected from the front of the old house, damp and riddled with woodworm. The root of a nearby oak sliced through it, warping the decking.

It seemed to Charlie that it was incredibly out of place – and surely a long way from civilisation. He was doubtful that anyone would want to live there.

The canopy of trees was a little less dense here, and the cobalt sky filtered into the forest. The sky was so dark, it might have been night. Charlie wasn't sure. Perhaps that was just the colour of the alien atmosphere, or perhaps it was because this was a dark memory for the Doctor.

"What is this place?" Charlie asked.

The Doctor glared at him, warning him to be wary. "It's an orphanage."

"Kids?" Charlie realised.

The Doctor nodded.

"Whatever's coming is gonna come here?"

"Yes," the Doctor croaked.

The Doctor cautiously knocked on the door, the decking groaning as he stepped up to the house.

It took a few moments before anyone came to the door, and a few more moments for the scraping of locks and chains to subside.

The door swung open, and the Doctor's hands shot up in surrender.

Charlie was too stunned to follow his example, as he found the cold, rusting barrel of a shotgun aimed at his nose.

He really wished he could say that this was the first time, but then, maybe it was just as well it wasn't.

At the other end of the shotgun was a stern old woman with a screwed-up face like a rat's. She looked as though she didn't trust anyone as far as she could throw them, which judging by her small stature, wasn't very far. Her beady eyes studied him up and down.

"Um, no, it's okay…" Charlie reasoned, raising his palms to show he meant no harm. "I don't know what's going on, but we might be able to help."

"We're not dangerous," the Doctor added.

The woman grunted, keeping her weapon aimed, and her gaze locked on Charlie.

"I only have your word for that," she growled. Her voice was hoarse, and just as stern as her gaze.

There was a man hovering timidly behind her. He was middle aged, with thinning black hair. He seemed to wear a permanent expression of puzzlement, and had a white dog's collar around his neck, indicating that he was a clergyman.

"Who are they?" he asked.

"Answer!" the woman barked, jabbing at Charlie with her weapon.

"I – I'm Charlie, this is the…"

"No, don't!" the Doctor interjected.

"…Doctor…" Charlie finished. But he was too late.

The woman swung the shotgun towards the Doctor, and a blast spat out of barrel of the gun. Charlie leapt back in shock, as the Doctor yelled in pain.


	4. Better the Doctor You Know

It had all happened so fast.

The old woman had fired the shotgun as soon as Charlie had mentioned the Doctor's name.

Her shot had hit its mark: the centre of the Doctor's chest. It had shredded his shirt and jacket, but that was the least of his worries – he was bleeding heavily.

"What have you done?" Charlie roared at the old woman.

She didn't respond, and cocked the gun again.

"This didn't happen the first time," the Doctor grunted.

He staggered upright once more, and gasped for breath.

"Dear god, he's still alive…" the man exclaimed.

"He is a demon!" the old woman declared, preparing to shoot again.

"No!" Charlie yelled, jumping in front of the Doctor, and raising his arms defensively. "He's already dying! He needs help! Please!"

He looked into the old woman's eyes. She was afraid. But her fear was driving her cold-blooded actions. The gun remained directed at the Doctor.

Charlie tried to convey his fear and his desperation, hoping it would strike a chord, and prove that they really didn't mean any harm.

"Perhaps he _is_ telling the truth," the man offered nervously.

"We can't be sure of that," the woman snapped.

"Then you must decide quickly," he urged.

"I promise he can help," Charlie uttered desperately.

The woman bitterly held his gaze for a moment, but eventually relented, and lowered her gun.

"Get him inside. Quickly!"

The man rushed out to help Charlie haul the Doctor into the old house, and set him down in a chair whilst the woman locked and bolted the door.

They were in a small kitchen. A rickety wooden table sat in the centre of the room, and a large black cooking pot balanced on an unlit stove. It was a simple, functional kitchen, lined with old wooden cabinets – something Charlie might have expected to see a hundred years ago. Not that he was paying attention to any of his surroundings.

The Doctor gasped, clutching his chest. There was a thick, green ooze seeping from his wound, clotting around his fingers.

The clergyman was rifling through the cupboards, digging out tins of medical supplies.

Charlie knelt by the Doctor's chair, unsure whether he should be trying to stem the flow of green fluid from his chest.

"Oh…" groaned the Doctor. "I'll never get this out of my shirt…"

"What is this stuff?" asked Charlie, interrupting the Doctor's apparently delusional wittering. "That's not your blood, is it?"

"It's green!" exclaimed the Doctor. "Of course it's not my blood! You think I have green blood?"

"Sorry, I just thought…" Charlie shook his head. "Yeah, that's not really important, is it?"

"It's the Arachnid venom," the Doctor explained, "and its manifestation in my mind."

Charlie backed out of the way as the clergyman returned, with a bowl of water and a roll of bandages. He let him tend to the Doctor's wound, as a woman burst into the kitchen.

She was a short, plump woman. Long blonde hair cascaded around her kindly features, which were currently twisted into an expression of alarm.

"Mrs Madigan? Reverend? What's all this noise?"

"These two were sneaking around outside," Mrs Madigan growled, still clutching her shotgun in her gnarled hands.

"I knocked on the door!" the Doctor protested, before wincing in pain.

The reverend sighed patiently, wringing a stained cloth.

"If you wouldn't mind sitting still?"

"This one's a _doctor_ ," Mrs Madigan sneered, flicking her wrist in the Doctor's direction.

The woman's eyes widened, and she skirted around the edges of the room, keeping her distance from the Doctor.

"I don't understand," Charlie confronted them. "What's wrong with… being a doctor?"

Mrs Madigan glared at him with mistrustful eyes.

He was refused an explanation.

Eventually, the Doctor broke the silence.

"Words mean different things on different worlds."

"So what does that mean? What does 'doctor' mean here?"

Charlie shot the Doctor a look of irritation. The lack of a straight answer was frustrating.

"Devil," Mrs Madigan spat.

"What?" Charlie uttered. "Is this for real?"

"Yes," the Doctor muttered. "I don't know why. But it's part of the reason everyone turned against me."

"Quiet!" Mrs Madigan hissed.

Charlie was about to object to the old woman's brusque attitude, until he saw the look of terror on her features.

She was listening intently. She kept looking back towards the door, touching each of the locks, just to make sure they were secure.

"What?" Charlie asked her.

"I can hear them," she croaked. "Miss Rossini, arm yourself."

The other woman reluctantly picked up a rifle from the top of the kitchen cupboards.

"You know I don't like using weapons."

"I'm afraid we have little choice," the reverend assured her.

The room fell silent, and this time, Charlie heard it.

Howling.

A shrill, chilling howl, to which other voices added their own terrifying responses.

What were they? Wolves? Or something worse?

Mrs Madigan dimmed the flickering gas light stove in the centre the table, plunging the room into shadow.

Charlie could still see the whites of her eyes, as she silently urged everyone to keep quiet.

There was a thud against the door, and Charlie jumped.

His muscles tensed, pumping with adrenaline.

Mrs Madigan and Miss Rossini immediately aimed their weapons at the door.

Miss Rossini was trembling. If the thing at the door got in, she was shaking so much that she'd probably miss – if she fired a shot at all.

Charlie wasn't sure that any of them stood a chance. Because even the Doctor was visibly scared. His eyes were locked on the doorway, his face crumpled in dread.

The creature was trying desperately to break in. It rattled the door, clawed at the wood; the jangling of chains added to the hammering in a chorus of horror.

Charlie was scared that the flimsy door would be reduced to splinters in a matter of seconds; it seemed to bulge every time the thing tried to force its way in.

Somehow, it held.

And after a minute that seemed to last for ages, the noise stopped.

Even in the silence that followed, Mrs Madigan refused to lower her weapon.

"Has it gone?" Charlie whispered.

"I don't know," Miss Rossini answered hopefully.

"No," Mrs Madigan spoke sharply, shooting her a steely glare. "They attack every night. For hours."

She turned to Charlie. "They're wild. They have no mercy. I don't think they will ever stop, until we are all dead."

The Doctor's eyes fell dejectedly upon the floorboards.

"We can't stop them." She shook her head, her lips pursed in thought. "We can't kill them."

Charlie regarded Mrs Madigan's vicious shotgun, which had done considerable damage to the Doctor.

"Why not? How strong _are_ they?"

"It's not that," the Doctor muttered. "They just can't."

Charlie narrowed his eyes, studying the Doctor. What did he mean? Why was everyone being so vague? What were they so reluctant to talk about?

Charlie suddenly became aware that the five of them were no longer alone in the room, and he leapt back, startled, when he noticed the figure standing in the hallway.

Mrs Madigan immediately lowered her shotgun when she saw that it wasn't a monster. It was a little girl, who couldn't have been older than six; her untidy black hair a bird's nest of knots.

Miss Rossini hid her gun under the table, and rushed over to the girl.

"Poppy? What's wrong? Why are you out of bed?"

"I'm sorry, Miss Rossini," the girl mumbled. "I heard noises."

Charlie looked over at the Doctor, who was staring at the girl in concern, even as the reverend finished bandaging his wound.

Miss Rossini knelt down, and pushed a stray strand of hair behind the girl's ear.

"Oh, Poppy, there's nothing to be scared of," she said, trying to reassure the girl. "Go back to bed."

"Are the shutters still closed, child?" Mrs Madigan asked. Her tone was rather harsh – but softer compared to her attitude towards Charlie and the Doctor. "You didn't open them?"

Poppy's lip began trembling, and she looked as though she were about to cry. Charlie really hoped she wouldn't. He couldn't stand crying children.

"Poppy? You didn't look outside?" Miss Rossini asked, kindly.

"No, miss," Poppy said quickly.

"Good. That's good," Miss Rossini chimed. "We're only trying to keep you all safe."

Poppy nodded quickly, desperate to avoid any further scolding.

"Miss Rossini, you'd better take her upstairs, and make sure the other children are all right," Mrs Madigan ordered. "Then get some rest. The Reverend and I will take the first watch."

"Yes, of course," Miss Rossini agreed, taking Poppy by the hand, and leading her back upstairs.

"And take our… guests with you. You'll be safer upstairs, too," Mrs Madigan added, reluctantly nodding at the Doctor and Charlie.

The Doctor grunted dismissively.

Charlie met his gaze for a moment. He had a feeling they wouldn't be any safer upstairs.

He waited for the Doctor, making sure that he was well enough to move. Although the Doctor winced slightly whenever he took a step, he seemed otherwise okay. He certainly didn't want any help, waving off all of Charlie's attempts to offer assistance.

Nearly every step creaked and groaned loudly as they ascended the bare staircase into the darkness above.

There were only three rooms upstairs, and Charlie followed Miss Rossini into the largest one.

This was the children's room. There were at least a dozen beds, but only three or four kids.

They were all awake, staring at them with fearful eyes.

Miss Rossini tucked Poppy back into bed.

"Now," she smiled, "try to get some sleep?"

Poppy nodded, but she looked doubtful.

Charlie looked around at all the kids. They were all scared – even the eldest, who looked about thirteen.

"Why are there so many empty beds?" he asked the Doctor.

"It took the children first," the Doctor repeated quietly.

Charlie's heart tugged at him. Actually seeing this seemed to have a greater impact on him.

"You mean they're all… dead?" he whispered.

"No," the Doctor muttered sadly.

Charlie twisted round to look at him. Even in the shadows, he could see the remorse on the Doctor's face.

"Something _worse_ than death?"

The Doctor was silent for a moment, before he gave his answer in a sigh.

"What do you think's attacking the house?"

Charlie's stomach lurched.

"No?" he looked at the Doctor in disbelief. "No."

But the Doctor held his gaze. Regrettably, yes.

Charlie looked at the kids around him, and thought back to that thing scratching at the door. It couldn't have been a child. It sounded more like an animal, the way it clawed at the door in frenzy.

Miss Rossini turned to him. Her eyes were brimming with tears, which she was trying to hide from the children.

"We hoped… we prayed that they were just playing some kind of game."

"It was worse for the parents," the Doctor commented. "Their own children hunted them.

"Can you imagine that?" he asked Charlie.

Charlie shook his head. His throat was too tight to respond.

"I don't know what possessed them. I'd never seen anything like it in all my days," Miss Rossini croaked.

"Nor had I," the Doctor admitted.

"Thank goodness we've been able to keep them out," she muttered. "They can't get in here."

Her voice was a little shaky, like she was trying to convince herself she was safe, but she didn't truly believe it.

"But they have got in," Poppy insisted.

Miss Rossini's heart almost stopped. She looked like she was going to be sick.

"What? What do you mean?"

Poppy looked over to one of the empty bunks.

The Doctor, who had been perched on the edge of a bed, leapt to his feet, whipping the sonic out of his pocket.

Charlie noticed that all the kids were sitting in the middle of their beds, hugging their knees.

Miss Rossini was chewing agitatedly on her fists.

The Doctor shook the sonic screwdriver, and scowled.

"It's not working properly!" he growled.

He glanced over at Charlie, and then at the children.

That seemed to strengthen his resolve, and he crouched down by the empty bunk.

He couldn't see a thing under there – it was too dark.

"They're after the children!" Miss Rossini wailed.

"Shh!" the Doctor hissed; the whites of his eyes visible as he shot a warning glare at her.

Charlie backed away slightly, staring at the shadows underneath the bed, his heart thumping way too loud.

The Doctor rolled up his sleeve, and Charlie realised what he was about to do. He was dreading what the Doctor would find as he plunged his arm into the darkness.

His eyes widened momentarily, and Charlie was certain the Doctor had felt something.

"There's nothing there," the Doctor muttered.

Miss Rossini breathed a shaky sigh of relief.

"Thank goodness," she laughed. "There was nothing there. It was just your imagination, Poppy."

The kids did not seem reassured. They were still tense, clinging to their bedsheets like they were their only lifelines.

Charlie slowly became aware that one of the boys was staring at him, and he felt a cold shiver grasp his spine, as though someone had thrust ice cubes down the back of his neck.

He locked eyes with the tousle-haired kid, and a thought struck him.

He'd been thinking of all these kids as, well, kids, because they were much younger than him. But Charlie was seventeen. In the eyes of this monster, he was still a child. If this thing was after children, it would be after him, too.

He was about to mention this to the Doctor, when he felt something brush against his ankle.

Before he even thought to look down, his feet were pulled away from beneath him.

He only just managed to raise his hands, before his nose could crack against the hard wooden floor, and he felt himself being dragged sharply beneath the bed.

"No," he gasped, his head pounding, pumping with adrenaline. He reached out, clawing at the floorboards, but failed to get a proper grip on anything.

The other kids gasped, and the Doctor whirled round. He was immediately by Charlie's side, trying to haul him back. He had a tight hold on his armpits; Charlie was pretty sure that all the Doctor would achieve would be to dislocate his arm from their sockets.

He tried to kick the creature away, but he could barely move his legs.

"Doctor!" he yelled.

The thing tugged at his foot, its vice-like grip dragging him into the darkness.

It was seconds away from overpowering him, swallowing him up.

Succumbing to panic, a thousand words surged through his head, hundreds of people screaming at him; a meaningless scramble of terror.

"Doctor!"


	5. The Nightmare Child

"Doctor!" Charlie hollered again. The words scraped the inside of his throat like sandpaper.

"Hold on, Charlie," the Doctor yelled back at him, releasing him with one of his hands to fumble for the sonic screwdriver.

The Doctor's grip weakened, the thing under the bed yanked at his foot again. He sank further into the shadows, the small of his back grazed by the sharp edges of the bed.

He ignored the pain, aware that he was trapped in the middle of a lethal game of tug-of-war – which the Doctor was losing. If they lost, it would end in his death – or something far worse.

Charlie really didn't want to think about it.

The sonic screwdriver flared and whined, but it did nothing; the thing's iron grip was as strong as before.

"Doctor? What- what's going to happen to me?" Charlie asked, his voice bleeding with distress.

"Nothing will happen to you," the Doctor snarled through gritted teeth.

Charlie took a deep breath, trying to keep a hold of himself - and the Doctor's sleeve.

He was stunned to hear Miss Rossini utter an animalistic roar, expending all her energy to heave at the bed, and flip it over. It crashed into another empty bunk.

The creature's grip vanished instantly.

Charlie shared a bewildered look with the Doctor. He peered back at the now-vacant dusty space.

With the bed's shadow gone, there was nothing there.

The Doctor's almost skeletal fingers were still clamped around his arms, and it took him a minute to think to let go.

"Was that…?" Miss Rossini trembled.

Mrs Madigan chose this moment to burst into the room, her ever-present shotgun by her side.

"What happened?" she barked.

Her eyes darted around the room, but detected no danger.

"The monsters are inside," the Doctor explained.

"Inside?" Mrs Madigan exclaimed. "How is that possible?"

"They're everywhere – lurking in the shadows. Nowhere is safe."

"But… but-but… was that even real?" the shell-shocked Miss Rossini mumbled.

"It…" Charlie held himself back, before he could utter a curse, "…felt pretty real to me!"

"It wasn't there! I never saw anything!" she protested.

"There _was_ something there!" Charlie argued. "Doctor?"

"Yes," the Doctor growled, glaring at the two women. "They're always real. The monsters under the bed… the creatures in the closet… the beasts outside the window…"

Charlie frowned, recalling his first adventure with the Doctor – the Wraith outside his bedroom window, which couldn't possibly have been real. But it was – the Doctor had shown him that the impossible could indeed be very plausible.

"But no!" the Doctor turned sharply on his heel, and changed momentum. "It's the wind, and the trees. The pipes, or your eyes playing tricks. It's just… _your imagination!"_

The Doctor's voice was dripping with sarcasm, and Mrs Madigan shot him a puzzled expression. She didn't quite understand.

"But those things _are_ just nightmares. They're just things the children dream up," she argued.

"Why _do_ children dream up monsters?" the Doctor asked, throwing his arms into the air. "It doesn't make sense!"

He grinned, but his grin turned cold, and melted away.

"Who chooses to be afraid of the dark? No-one! But we all were. We all are."

Charlie bit his lip, the Doctor's words striking close to home.

"Has it never occurred to you that the children aren't making it up?"

The children were looking up at the Doctor in awe. As though he was the first grown-up who had ever listened to them, and understood them.

"Why do they believe in monsters? We don't teach them," the Doctor paused, thrusting his fist under his nose, before continuing. "Has it never occurred to you that the monsters your children are scared of are real?"

Mrs Madigan was dumbfounded.

"That's… preposterous." She waved her finger in the air, pointing outside. "Now, those creatures outside – the ones trying to kill us. They're real."

The Doctor grunted.

Charlie couldn't tell whether he was agreeing with her, or whether he'd just lost his patience.

The latter seemed more likely; the Doctor kept glancing at his watch.

Charlie pulled his phone out of his pocket, and checked the time. The digits kept changing, blinking from one random number to another. He showed it to the Doctor.

"Why's it doing that?"

The Doctor stared at it for a second.

"Time is very complex. Time in a dream has no relation to time in the real world. The numbers keep changing, because you have no idea what time it is."

Charlie frowned, sliding the phone back into his pocket. "I keep forgetting this isn't really happening."

"Oh, but it is," the Doctor explained. "Your body can't tell the difference. I would imagine that if you were to die here, the shock will probably kill you."

"Oh, great," whispered Charlie. "That makes me feel _so_ much better. So if those… things come in, they might kill me – and I'll actually die?"

"Don't worry," the Doctor assured him. "I put up a psychic defence around the building. Nothing's powerful enough to get past that."

There was a loud crash from downstairs. The splintering of wood. Almost certainly the front door caving in.

"Hmm," grumbled the Doctor. "Maybe I should have kept that to myself."

Charlie looked at him in horror.

"What was that?" Miss Rossini quivered.

A second later, there was a wail of terror from the reverend, which was abruptly cut short.

Miss Rossini's mouth dropped open in shock, and she, along with everyone else in the room, was stunned into silence, not daring to make a noise. They feared the worst.

The Doctor waved his hand, indicating that everyone should keep back, as he crept towards the door.

He listened for a moment, but heard nothing.

He turned back to Charlie, fixing him with an expression that asked: _are you ready?_

Charlie wasn't, but the Doctor grasped the door handle regardless, and yanked the door open.

Charlie's heart almost stopped, and he stumbled backwards.

In the doorway, was a child. The boy couldn't have been older than nine or ten.

There was war paint streaked across his face, and twigs knotted into his hair. He was dressed in the tattered remains of what appeared to be his original garments, with the addition of animal pelts stretched around them. There was a malevolent gleam on his round face.

He looked fierce; dangerous, even without the heavy club he was wielding.

Except it wasn't a club, Charlie realised, a feeling of nausea broiling inside him. It was a bone. A human bone.

His mouth curled into a snarl, and he growled, softly.

The noise raised the hairs on the back of Charlie's neck.

He was more animal than child.

The boy's wild eyes scanned them all, in turn. There was an unnatural energy about the boy. As though he could run for days, without tiring. As though he had no fear.

The eyes glanced over Charlie, and the thought crossed his mind that he was going to die. This kid was going to kill him.

Finally, the eyes settled on the Doctor.

It was clear that he had assessed the room, and found no one to be a threat – except for the Doctor.

The kid's features twisted into a frown, and regarded the Doctor with childlike curiosity. He inclined his head, unsure.

The Doctor held the kid's gaze.

"We're going to get out of here," the Doctor said, levelly, without taking his eyes off the child.

"On three. One… two… three!"

The Doctor slammed the door shut, and pressed his shoulder against it, using all his weight to barricade the door.

Mrs Madigan blasted one of the boarded-up windows with her shotgun. Miss Rossini pulled a coiled rope ladder from a chest, and unrolled it out the window.

The kid outside began to hammer on the door with his club. It was a hollow sound.

Charlie dreaded the thought that very soon, it would be his bones that the kid would be wielding.

"Quickly, outside," Mrs Madigan ordered. "Run as far as you can, and hide."

The kids began to climb out of the window. It was an evacuation drill they'd practiced before. One they'd hoped never to have to put into action.

Poppy had begun crying. It wasn't the loud, sobbing kind of crying, but silent.

The children had learnt to cry without making a sound.

Charlie's heart twinged – because he knew that feeling. For once, he actually felt a connection with these children, afraid and alone.

Miss Rossini hissed at her to hurry and, tears streaming down her face, Poppy climbed out.

"Is there nothing we can do?" Charlie urged the Doctor.

"No," the Doctor managed, struggling against the door. "We can't reason with them. We can't stop them."

The Doctor sighed, his resolved weakened.

" _I_ can't stop them.

Charlie felt cold. The Doctor was giving up.

The door flew open, and the Doctor staggered backwards.

The kid screamed at them. No words or thought – just pure rage.

Mrs Madigan aimed her shotgun.

"Keep back!" she yelled. "I _will_ shoot."

The kid merely grinned at her. And he _knew_ that Mrs Madigan could never bring herself to pull the trigger.

He snaked towards her, shoulders hunched, ready to pounce.

"Charlie!" the Doctor shouted.

Charlie realised that he'd been transfixed by the kid's advance. Shaken into action, he raced for the window, and scrambled outside.

He kept missing the rungs of the rope ladder in his desperation to get out, and he was almost surprised that he made it down without breaking his bones.

He waited for the Doctor to make it out, as the children swarmed around the house.

They were everywhere, some concealed in the undergrowth, some out in the open, beating clubs together.

Charlie's head swam, as he looked around, trying to locate them all in the darkness.

Miss Rossini was doing her best to protect the children, but Charlie could see that they were all terrified.

He could see moonlight streaming through the forest canopy, shining bright as a black cloud slid aside. One of the kids, balanced on a branch high in the trees, began to howl.

Some of the other kids took up the call.

Charlie began to panic, until the Doctor, from out of nowhere, grabbed his arm.

"Run!" he roared.

Charlie didn't hesitate this time.

He could hear the children laughing as they began to flee.

"Find them! Get them!" they chanted.

Miss Rossini didn't make it very far, before the children were upon her, knocking her down like a cheetah tackling a gazelle.

There was nothing they could do to help her. Charlie didn't dare watch, and kept running.

She screamed.

Just like the reverend's cry, it ended horribly.

He didn't see what happened to the other children. He didn't want to know, but he hoped that they were able to escape. He hoped that they wouldn't be turned into these… monsters.

Charlie vaulted over a broken fence, and found himself back in the dense forest. The trees were a blur as he ran.

The Doctor was racing alongside him. Charlie glanced behind, and found that only Mrs Madigan was still with them. She blindly fired a warning shot, but it did nothing to deter their hunters.

She stumbled, and winced sharply.

Looking back, wondering what had happened, Charlie saw that she had injured her ankle. Mrs Madigan was an old lady. Charlie seriously doubted that she'd been able to run like the Doctor.

"Doctor!" she called.

The Doctor paused for a moment, and Charlie did too, despite his desire to run as far away from here as possible.

"Help me," she pleaded.

All things considered, Charlie thought it was incredible that this woman – who had shot the Doctor for believing he was a devil – was now asking for his help.

He thought it more incredible that the Doctor was actually considering stopping to help, because any second now, those kids would be upon them.

And what would happen next scarcely bared thinking about.

"Doctor?" Charlie urged. He wasn't sure what the Doctor was going to do. He wasn't sure he could do anything.

"You keep running!" the Doctor growled.

"And what about you?" Charlie argued.

The Doctor looked torn between staying to help Mrs Madigan, and running with Charlie, to make sure he got away safely.

With the sounds of yowling and yelling getting closer, the Doctor made his decision.

"I have to try to help them."

It felt as though the Doctor had punched him in the chest. Charlie knew that the Doctor would do anything to help someone who needed his help. Even if it put him in danger.

Charlie fought his indecisive mind. The Doctor wanted him to run, without him, and find the TARDIS. But he didn't want to leave the Doctor by himself. And perhaps, although he didn't dare admit it, he didn't want the Doctor to leave him.

It scared him to face these monsters alone.

"Then… I'll stay, as well," he settled.

"No!" the Doctor roared. "You – run!"

Charlie saw the wild kids break through the barrier of trees, and immediately did as he was told.

It felt wrong – really wrong – but he ran, leaving the Doctor and Mrs Madigan to face the savages alone.

Charlie wasn't sure how far he could run, but he didn't like his chances.

They had boundless energy, primal and unnatural; he feared that it wouldn't be long before they caught him.

He was already out of breath after a few minutes, but he pressed on. There was no other choice.

He could hear the children behind him, yelling sinister chants and taunts. He found it in him to run faster, even though it was murdering his legs. He barely touched the ground as he tore through the trees.

There were more of them, standing on the edge of a ridge to one side, armed with projectile weapons: whittled spears, sharpened to a point – primitive, but deadly.

He veered away from them, and was lucky to avoid a rock hurled at his head.

Charlie kept running, but they were still chasing behind him.

It didn't occur to him that the hunters had been clever. They weren't mindless savages – they were fiercely intelligent, and cunning.

He realised too late that he had been driven straight into a trap.

Just as he spotted the two kids ahead of him, his foot snagged on a piece of twine, and he tripped up, flying face first into the dirt.

He didn't dare look up, burying his face in the earth, as the footsteps trampled the rotten twigs around his ears.

This was it.


	6. Into the Fire

"What the hell are you doing here?" someone asked him.

This was strange, Charlie realised, because it was a man's voice – not a bloodthirsty child.

As he ventured around with his fingers, he discovered that the ground felt different. It was no longer the damp, mossy forest – but a hard, gleaming white floor.

He finally looked up, and was met with the bright lights of some kind of spaceship or space station.

"Woah…" he muttered, dazed by the disorienting vision.

He tried to stand up, and was roughly pushed to the side of the corridor by one of the dozen men around him.

They were soldiers, judging by the heavy scales of armour and bulky guns.

Fortunately, they weren't aiming at him. But then, they seemed rather preoccupied, or they didn't consider him a threat.

They all wore a red and black military uniform, emblazoned with gold circular symbols.

Charlie was pressed up against the wall by a fierce looking man, with heavy lidded eyes and a shock of fair hair. He seemed to be a battle-hardened veteran, and appeared to be the only soldier without a helmet. Perhaps he held a higher rank than the others. Or perhaps he'd realised that helmets weren't going to make much difference.

There was a tremor, which would have knocked Charlie over again, if it weren't for the soldier grabbing him.

He hardly batted an eyelid, even though the spaceship they were on was under heavy fire.

"What are you?" he demanded. "How did you get on board?"

"I… I don't know," Charlie stammered.

"Are you one of them?" he yelled.

"Them? Who – who's them?"

"The Daleks!" the soldier barked with incredulity.

"I don't even know who they are," Charlie confessed, hoping that these soldiers would believe him, and weren't about to kill him.

"Then what are you?"

"I'm – I'm just a human."

The soldier shared a stunned glance with one of the others.

"A human? What's a human doing on board this ship?"

"I don't even know how I got here!" Charlie protested. "I was with the Doctor."

The soldier glared at him, as though he'd just spat in his face.

"Perhaps the Renegade brought him aboard," suggested one of the others.

"Is he here?" one of the others asked.

"What is he doing? Taking _children_ into battle?"

Charlie was quiet as the soldiers conferred. He could tell they were all scared. They were in the middle of a battle, and they all seemed to know of the Doctor.

"You're Time Lords," he realised. These were the Doctor's people. They were at war.

The soldier looked at him again. "Yes."

"Do you know where the Doctor is? Could you get me to him?" Charlie asked.

The soldier regarded him as though he were something unpleasant that he'd stepped in.

"He's not here. In any case, I rather doubt you'll be safer with him. In fact, by the Doctor's side is probably the most dangerous place you can be."

"Then…" Charlie began.

"Silence," the Time Lord grunted.

There was another explosion, and Charlie felt an impact rock the ship.

"Take up positions," the Time Lord Commander ordered, releasing Charlie. "Nothing must get past."

There was a window in the opposite wall, like a porthole. Through it, Charlie could see hundreds of bronze saucers bearing down upon them. They were unleashing a barrage of intense laser fire.

A short distance away, a capsule-shaped ship succumbed to the onslaught, and exploded in a blazing fireball. Charlie expected to see shrapnel; fragments from the ship blasting into space.

Instead, the innards of the ship billowed out. The ship was turning inside out: control rooms multiplying tenfold. These were Time Lord ships, bigger on the inside, like the TARDIS – they must have been similar to the vessel he was standing in.

There was no counting how many people must have been on that ship; how many people were dying in this war.

Then he remembered that this was just another memory – something the Doctor had seen. Was it possible that this memory was even worse than the last?

Charlie was trapped in this memory, however terrible it was. And this time, he was separated from the Doctor.

"Sir," one of the soldiers spoke up, staring wild-eyed at a comms device, "Gamma squad have just reported there's been a hull breach. They're on board."

The Commander cursed. "How many?"

The soldier shook his head. "An entire battalion."

The Commander's rigid posture slumped, as the colour drained from his features.

"If the Daleks have boarded the ship…"

He looked around. It seemed to Charlie that he was silently saying his farewells to the other soldiers.

"…then we're all dead," he concluded.

"What about the boy?" one of the soldiers asked, pointing at Charlie.

They kept talking about him as if he wasn't even there. So it surprised him that any of them cared.

"There's nothing we can do for him. There's no hope for any of us. The least we can pray for is that the General will have mercy on our souls. Pray that he won't resurrect us to fight again."

"Even if we end up in Hell… it can't be any worse than this," one of the soldiers muttered.

The other soldiers shot him grim looks, but none of them denied it.

The ship shuddered again. They could hear the strange sounds of energy weapons discharging; getting louder, as the assailants neared.

"Shouldn't we at least get this human out of here?" the one compassionate soldier suggested.

"No point," the Commander muttered, drawing his pistol. "He's as good as dead already."

"I'm not having this," Charlie protested, standing up – only to be shoved back against the wall by one of the Time Lords, "I need to find the Doctor.

"The Doctor isn't here," the Commander growled.

"He has to be. This is his memory," Charlie reasoned, "I'm going to find him – and I'm not letting any of you stand in my way. You're not even real!"

One of the men, dull grey eyes, and a battered nose, turned sharply towards him. His sudden gaze was so severe that Charlie almost leapt out of his skin.

"What did you say?"

"You're not real," Charlie muttered. "This isn't _really_ happening. We're in a kind of dream."

The soldier narrowed his eyes.

"I'm sorry?" he challenged.

"I mean…"

The other soldiers began muttering among themselves. They clearly thought he was crazy, except for the one soldier, whose entire attention was focused solely on Charlie, despite the fact that their ship was under attack.

"Ricard, focus!" the Commander grunted.

"Of course, Commander," Ricard replied, continuing to ignore his orders.

He turned back to Charlie.

"You're certain this is a dream?"

"Yeah."

Ricard frowned, mulling over Charlie's assertion.

"If this is a dream, then you're not the one doing the dreaming."

Charlie threw the man a puzzled glare, inching away from him slightly.

"I don't understand what you mean?"

Ricard refused to explain further, but kept his eyes locked on him.

Charlie didn't have a chance to ask any more questions.

There was an explosion at the far end of the corridor, as the attackers blasted the bulkhead doors.

The other soldiers quaked, firing hesitant looks at the Commander, steadfast in his belief that it was their duty to stand their ground.

The corridor beyond was clouded with thick, black smoke, concealing the advancing forces. Charlie had no idea what the Daleks looked like, but he was pretty certain he never wanted to find out.

The Daleks opened fire: single, precise bursts of electric blue laser bolts, which evaporated the Time Lords instantly, reducing them to ashes. They screamed in pain, until they had no lungs left to scream with.

They were clinical. Precise. Not a single shot was wasted.

He couldn't tell how many Daleks there were. There could have been thirty, or there could have been one.

The Time Lords returned fire, but their defence seemed ineffective, as they were vaporised, one by one. They knew they were doomed.

Charlie kept out of the way, hiding at the back of the squad. The middle of a warzone was the last place he wanted to end up.

It seemed that the Doctor was unintentionally showing him the worst ways to die. The thought made him despair. How fragile and fleeting was life, in this wide and dangerous universe?

"Retreat!" the Commander yelled, realising that they stood no chance against the shrouded attackers. "We can't stop them."

The Time Lords darted between cover, laying down bursts of suppressive fire, whilst the few surviving soldiers retreated back down the corridor.

Charlie did the same, trying to keep out of harm's way. Ricard shadowed him, keeping close behind. Not once did he fire his own weapon. He seemed more concerned about where Charlie was heading.

The strange man was beginning to unnerve him. Something about his reaction to Charlie mentioning that he was in a dream had changed him. It had drawn Ricard's attention to him.

He wondered what that meant – was it good or bad?

Suddenly, the Daleks ceased their offensive, and began screaming in grating, electronic voices.

The Time Lords shared worried looks, fearing what was about to happen.

"THE DOCTOR IS DETECTED!" one of the Daleks screamed, its voice laced with hate, fury.

The soldiers' worried glances melted into hope.

"The Doctor's here?" they murmured. "He's on board?"

 _They were saved_ , their expressions indicated.

Except there was more to it. Charlie could tell that they weren't all overjoyed to hear the news. It was as though they were thinking: _at least, we hope we are._

"LOCATE THE DOCTOR! EXTERMINATE HIM!"

"ONLY ONE UNIT IS NECESSARY TO EXTERMINATE THE OTHERS."

It didn't sound as though the Daleks were just going to leave them.

And the Time Lords still seemed terrified at the prospect of facing just one of these monsters.

"If we concentrate our fire, sir?" one of the soldiers suggested.

"Aim for the eyestalk?"

"No," the Commander grunted. "That won't succeed. There's only one way we can stop it."

They shared a grim look of realisation.

"I shall do it myself," the Commander decided. "The rest of you fall back."

"But sir?"

"That's an order!" the Commander yelled.

The Dalek advanced, issuing its harrowing cry of _EXTERMINATE!_

The only thing Charlie saw was a single, blue eye, penetrating the smoke.

"Yes, sir," the soldier responded, nodding gravely.

The other Time Lords took off down the corridor, and Charlie didn't hesitate to follow them.

Looking back over his shoulder as he ran, he saw the Commander standing tall and proud, courageously facing the oncoming Dalek.

An orange glow swirled around the Commander's hands, and flickered beneath his collar, as though his skin were erupting into flames.

Charlie somehow connected the pieces together in his mind. Without knowing exactly _how_ he knew, he knew that he was witnessing this magical regeneration the Doctor had mentioned on the verge of death.

The energy surrounding the Commander began to glow brighter, until his hands were no longer visible.

"Gallifrey will _never_ fall," the Commander resolutely issued his final words, before thrusting his hands forward, shooting a concentrated stream of golden energy into the smoke – straight at the Dalek.

The Dalek shrieked, emitting an electronic gargle as it exploded in a shower of sparks.

The Time Lord roared in agony, and a fireball erupted, the heat of which seared Charlie's back, even though he was far down the corridor.

There was no way the Dalek could have survived that.

The last Charlie saw before turning the corridor, was the Commander's shrivelled husk of a body collapsing to the floor in dust.

* * *

 **Author's Notes  
**

 **So this is my theory: during the Time War, the Time Lords found a way to weaponise regeneration. We've seen the Doctor destroy Daleks like this, on Trenzalore in _The Time of the Doctor_ – and he's destroyed the TARDIS a couple of times before as well.  
**


	7. The Test of Time Lords

One of the Time Lords grabbed him, and Charlie was pulled into a dimly lit room.

Charlie took a moment to get his breath back, leaning heavily against a wall. He tried to get the vivid image of the dying Commander out of his mind; his body withering into a decaying corpse, as his life was drained from him.

Finding his feet again, he eventually opened his eyes to the room the Time Lords had fled to, and found his breath summarily taken away again.

It should not have taken him by surprise, but they were standing inside a cathedral. Immense Gothic arches towered above them and seemed to vanish into space; it looked as though the roof was open to the elements.

Charlie could see the battle raging between the starships above him. It was surely impossible to have the ship open to space. It must have been a projection, or a screen – and an ultra-realistic one at that.

There was a console in the middle of the chamber, where the altar should have been, surrounded by concentric arcs of flashing control panels, instead of pews.

Charlie was astounded. But this was a Time Lord spaceship: bigger on the inside.

He inched closer to the console, manned by a lady in resplendent robes and a golden skull-cap. She commanded the soldiers to take up positions around the console.

Hovering above the console was an augmented reality map, pinpointing the positions of the Time Lords' and Daleks' ships.

The lady waved her hand, and the map focused in on the battle.

The cathedral looked to be some kind of war room.

"What of Commander Thoram?" the lady asked.

One of the soldiers quickly responded. "He expended his life energy to destroy one of the Daleks. His death gave us time to escape."

"Then it is unlikely his mind will have been uploaded," the lady reasoned. "That is a shame. Thoram was an excellent strategist."

Charlie stood awkwardly, trying to keep out of the way, as the Time Lords discussed tactics. He didn't understand half of what they were saying. Perhaps there weren't the words in the English language to properly equate with what they were saying. Or perhaps they really were using ridiculous terms like 'power boosted relays'.

From what he could gather, they were fighting a battle in four dimensions – time, as well as space. They were planning events which had already happened, and responding to future developments. But even their insight into the future gave them little advantage over the Daleks' power. There was very little they could do as more Time Lord ships blinked out of existence.

Despite the Time Lords' awareness of moments in the battle taking place in the past and the future, there was one factor that they couldn't foresee: the Doctor. His movements were unpredictable and irrational.

Charlie smiled, to himself. Yeah, that sounded like him.

It was strange listening to the other Time Lords talk about him. They spoke with such distain, especially the lady, who seemed to hate him.

However, unless he was mistaken, the subordinate soldiers regarded him with more respect, like they secretly revered him. To them, the Doctor was their only hope of surviving this war.

Despite this – and Charlie found this a little unsettling – they were all scared of him. They were scared of what only he was mad enough to accomplish. They were scared of what he was prepared to do to save them – with total disregard of his own safety. They were scared of what he was capable of.

And because they were unable to deduce what the Doctor was planning, none of them saw it coming.

There was a bright white flash in the vision of space above them.

"What was that?" one of the Time Lords asked.

They watched in surprise as a beam of light surged from one of the Time Lord ships, and struck the centre of the Dalek fleet. Explosions rippled through the hulls of the Dalek ships, causing a chain reaction that tore through their attack fleet.

On the holographic map in front of them, every single Dalek saucer blinked, and vanished.

"Dear god…" the lady uttered.

The shockwave blasted them, and the entire cathedral shuddered.

Charlie gaped up at the ceiling, as the debris from the destroyed saucers sailed in all directions.

He couldn't believe it.

The Doctor had done that?

The Doctor had always claimed to be a man of peace. He'd never so much as carry a gun, let alone use one. He always showed compassion, and mercy – even to his enemies. And yet Charlie had just witnessed him destroy all those creatures.

"Be careful," Ricard warned him. "You thought you knew him, didn't you?"

Goosebumps erupted over his skin. Ricard unnerved him, so Charlie avoided his gaze. But the strange Time Lord was right. He thought he _had_ known him. He thought he had the Doctor figured out.

But like all people, there was more going on inside his head. The Doctor wasn't just the eccentric old man he presented to the universe. Still, Charlie had never expected this.

He strode up to the table, and pushed into a gap between two soldiers.

"The Doctor's on this ship, right?"

The lady hadn't questioned his presence, as though she hadn't even noticed him. Even now, she barely glanced at him.

"Yes," one of the soldiers answered him.

"Then the TARDIS is here," Charlie deduced. "Where is it?"

The Time Lord shrugged.

"Tell me where it is," Charlie demanded.

He wasn't nearly as confident as he pretended to be. The Time Lords were treating him like a lesser being. He didn't care how advanced or 'superior' the Time Lords were. He still needed to save the Doctor.

The Time Lord flicked the map into a schematic of the ship. He pointed to a glowing red point in the bowels of the ship.

"The Doctor's TARDIS is there. It's the only unregistered capsule on board."

Charlie nodded, and broke away from the console.

Ricard stopped him before he could leave the chamber.

"You don't want to go down there," he warned.

"Why?"

"You might not like what you find."

"I don't like any of this!" Charlie argued.

"The Doctor has fears far darker than these, and so do you."

Charlie frowned. Ricard's foreboding words weren't promising. He seemed to have a surprising amount of knowledge for a memory.

"What are you planning to do?" Ricard demanded.

Charlie ignored him, breaking his grip and making for the door. Ricard was one step ahead of him, and stopped him again.

"What are you planning to do?" he asked again, more forcefully.

"I have to save the Doctor!" Charlie shouted at him.

He tried to get past again, but Ricard was blocking his way out.

"Get out of my way!"

Ricard hissed at him, and Charlie leapt back in surprise.

"No!" Ricard shrieked, in a sinister, ethereal voice. "Let him _die!_ "

Fury boiled in Charlie's blood, and he made no effort to restrain it. He grabbed Ricard's robes, and roughly shoved him aside.

"I will not let him die. I have to save him!"

He bolted for the door. He didn't know if Ricard was chasing after him; he didn't look behind him. But he wasn't taking any chances. He needed to get back to the TARDIS.


	8. Doctor of War

The Doctor sighed, allowing the controller to slide out of his hands. The controller, which could have passed for a games console pad, fell to the floor with a clunk.

Its purpose was far deadlier: this controller was wired up to a detonator. The plain old button on it had just been pressed, killing millions of Daleks – and Time Lords.

The Doctor rubbed his tired eyes, and it was a moment before he noticed that he was no longer alone.

"Step away from the controls," the wavering voice ordered.

The Doctor turned around, his hearts aching.

There was a young soldier standing in the doorway, his wiry frame silhouetted by a raging fire in the corridor beyond. He was pointing a staser pistol at him.

His eyes were wide. The gun was shaking.

"It's you!" the soldier uttered in disbelief, tightening his grip on the weapon.

He studied the Doctor, glancing him up and down with fearful eyes.

"You're unarmed." The observation was made with barely a whisper. The young soldiers heard tales of the Doctor's actions during the Last Great Time War; how he destroyed millions of Daleks single-handedly.

"Yes, I am," the Doctor agreed.

The Doctor stood calmly, his arms by his side, waiting for the soldier to come to a decision.

"And yet…"

The Time Lord stared at the viewscreen behind the Doctor; at the carnage raging in space around them. Fractured remains of Dalek vessels and splintered time capsules.

The Doctor didn't move, continuing to observe the soldier's horrified reaction.

"There were Time Lord ships among them."

"I know," the Doctor said. "The catalyst wouldn't have worked without them."

The young Time Lord's brows furled into a frown, appalled.

"One does not walk away from a war like this unscathed," the Doctor muttered.

The soldier shook his head. "I should…"

He glanced down at his staser pistol, squared on the Doctor.

"This will kill you."

Usually, this went without explanation. The Doctor was aware that the weapon was set with a powerful ray, which would destroy his regenerative capabilities. It _would_ kill him.

"I'm not scared," the Doctor said, truthfully.

He waited patiently. But the soldier was clearly reluctant to shoot him.

"But how could a mind even come up with that? How can you even imagine…?" he stammered. "What kind of monster are you?"

The Doctor locked eyes with the soldier for a moment. He wasn't arguing.

His mouth curled into a grimace, and he bore down upon the soldier, taking advantage of his fear.

"Congratulations! Think of the stories you can tell your grandchildren."

The soldier flinched, and backed away.

"Not only did you survive a battle against the Daleks. You survived me!" the Doctor roared.

The soldier paled, dropped his weapon, turned, and ran.

The Doctor fumed, watching him as he fled.

When the soldier was gone, he kicked the weapon with such force, it smashed against the wall.

He roared again.

It was a futile gesture. It made no difference. It didn't change anything. It didn't change the things he'd done.

He sank to the floor.

"Maybe this is it," he muttered. "Maybe this is my way out."

He stared blankly at the wrecked machinery around him.

"I'm old. Even for a Time Lord."

The Doctor couldn't be sure exactly how old he was. He had lived so many lives, and he couldn't possibly count the years. He didn't dare to look back.

"I've lived too long…"

He'd been here before, fighting against the inevitable. Delaying his death. Fighting to survive. Was it really worth it?

The Doctor had been running away his whole life. Perhaps it was time to stop.

"Why don't I just stop now?" he muttered aloud. He wasn't sure if there was anyone listening.

"Why don't I just choose to die now?" the Doctor considered.

"Maybe I'm scared of dying."

He frowned. "Everyone's scared of dying. Who isn't afraid of the darkness? The void of non-existence?"

"Maybe it's not that. Maybe I just don't want to."

He closed his eyes, and rested his head back against the wall.

"Doctor… oh, Doctor. I'm tired… I want to sleep…"

He opened his eyes again, but he was still dreaming. Still trapped in this recurring nightmare from the darkest days of the Time War.

"What the hell am I supposed to do?" he pleaded.

He waited for an answer, but there wasn't one coming.

No-one can ever answer those questions. The ones that really matter.

He felt a pang of despair, as he thought of all the lives that had been lost because of him. Was he really doing the right thing?

For once, he couldn't hold his emotions back, and a tear escaped him.

"Stop. Stop it. Stop crying," he growled, bitterly.

He frowned. A wave of light-headedness blanketing him.

The thought was there, in his mind, but it wasn't his. There was only one place that could have come from.

"Charlie?"

Was Charlie still fighting to save him, even now?

Why didn't the boy just stop? What was he fighting for?

The Doctor closed his eyes, and stepped inside his mind.

* * *

There were swirling dark shapes all around him.

Sure, he could change the colour scheme if he wanted. But introspection generally involved a certain amount of brooding. So the mood lighting had to be right.

The Doctor descended through his thoughts, until he found the ones that didn't belong to him.

These were Charlie's thoughts and memories; his hopes and fears. He was in here, too.

He approached the bubble of thoughts.

Well, it looked like a bubble, except it wasn't a bubble. But you can think of it as a bubble if you want.

It was fairly self-contained; Charlie's human mind was so much smaller than his, like a marble floating in an ocean. It was a wonder that he'd been able to find it.

Those dark shapes were swirling all around it, nuzzling the bubble inquisitively.

The Doctor wasn't sure what they were. Were they his own dark thoughts and suspicions? Was it his own self-hatred?

The shapes darted away like a shoal of frightened fish as soon as the Doctor approached it.

He pressed his fingertips against the bubble. Arcs of electricity leapt out from the space inside the bubble to meet them.

He connected with these neural pathways, and glimpsed inside.

In his mind, Charlie's memories were projected onto the surface of the bubble; snapshots of his life: his childhood, his schooldays, holidays and Christmases.

It was a wonderfully ordinary life – one the Doctor sometimes wished he could have lived.

There were more recent memories, of course, featuring the Doctor, which weren't so ordinary.

The further back he went, the more obscure the images were. Some of the memories were blurry, shrouded in fog. They were human memories after all. Things had been forgotten. Things were being kept secret – even from him.

The Doctor pressed further, trying to unravel the mysteries that were concealed from his vision.

He had to be careful – the mind was a fragile thing. Too much pressure and it could crack like an egg.

"There's something you don't want me to know, isn't there?" the Doctor mused.

There was a furious spark, and the Doctor leapt back. It was as though the mind had lashed out at him, frazzling his fingertips.

He shook his burnt hand, trying to cool his fingers.

He'd just been forced out of Charlie's mind, which confirmed his assumption. He had already guessed that – he didn't need to look inside the boy's thoughts just to know that he was hiding something.

He had called someone, when they were on the moon. And judging by Charlie's reaction, it hadn't gone well.

He kept mentioning a name, when he fell asleep in the TARDIS. It happened another time when Charlie had been knocked out by a Vinvocci criminal.

Logic dictated this was the same person. But who were they? And why were they significant?

And there was something else. Something highly unusual about him – perhaps Charlie himself wasn't even aware of it.

There was something odd about the Arachnid Queen's interest in him. And the Wraith – it didn't make sense.

"How can you just lock me out like that?" the Doctor thought aloud. "How are you this strong?"

Determined not to waste this opportunity to find out, the Doctor pulled out a stethoscope, and pressed it against the surface of the sphere.


	9. Alone in the Dark

Charlie climbed down through a hatch in the floor.

And here it was, in the depths of the Time Lords' ship: the TARDIS!

He had never been so relieved to see the old blue box.

It stood resilient, amongst the whirring machinery, despite the battered wooden panels; a light beyond the windows glowing softly.

Charlie leapt inside, and slammed the doors shut behind him.

He faltered for a moment, as he turned around to take in the interior.

He was certain he was inside the TARDIS. The only problem was: nothing looked right.

The warm orange glow from the central column was gone. Everything was grey, uninviting. Harsh flickering light shone from the scanners, casting long shadows across the control room. There was no sound. No hum of the engines, no pulsing from the time rotor.

Usually, the TARDIS made him feel safe. This didn't feel safe at all.

It felt wrong, like being in a school at night, when all the kids have gone home. Something that should be full of life, now a decaying ruin.

Trying to reassure himself, Charlie tried the door. It wouldn't open. There was no turning back.

He made his way over to the console, and tried a few of the controls. Nothing responded. There was no resistance from the levers. Everything was dead. Even the strange panel filled with viscous alien jelly had lost its spark.

He looked around.

What should he do now? Wait for the Doctor? Where was he? And how long would he be waiting for?

"A little help?" he asked the TARDIS.

There was no response.

If this was a still nightmare, it was like all his others: he was alone, and powerless.

He made one last, useless attempt to slam a lever.

He had to do _something._ The TARDIS – the real TARDIS – was counting on him to save the Doctor's life.

It was typical, where the Doctor was concerned, that he hadn't been given clear instructions on how exactly he could achieve that.

Charlie hung his head, leaning heavily on the TARDIS console, as he tried to clear his thoughts, and formulate something which resembled a realistic plan.

There was a bang – something was outside the TARDIS, trying to get in. It scratched and pounded at the door, exactly as the nightmare children had done.

The Doctor had told him that nothing could get through those doors. Then again, this had been shortly before a creature had broken in, and tried to devour them.

Of course, the Doctor could have been lying.

The hammering was getting louder, more insistent. He could see the TARDIS doors shaking.

Whatever was about to happen, Charlie knew he needed to get out of here.

If there was truly no way out, there was only one way left to go. Inside the TARDIS.

Perhaps then, he'd find a way to restore the power, and perhaps he'd be able to find the Doctor again.

He sped through the sliding steel door, which led to the TARDIS' corridors, just as he heard the police box doors crack open. He ran without thinking – just putting as much distance between him and the thing as he could.

Already, he was in unfamiliar territory. Charlie had never ventured this far into the Doctor's time machine before. He hadn't realised how vast it was. The identical stretches of corridor were nothing more than a maze. He had been running for mere minutes, and he knew there was no chance of finding the way back.

The rest of the interior was just as dingy as the control room had been. Any rooms he found were too dark to see inside. He had to rely on his phone for light, and he was seriously worried that the battery would die.

Not only was the TARDIS a maze, it shifted and changed as he trekked through it; even turning back through a door he'd just entered led him to a different part of the ship.

Charlie tried to keep calm, but it was frustrating. Every step he took got him even more lost. Without the Doctor, he'd be stuck in the depths of the TARDIS forever.

To top everything off, he kept hearing strange, unearthly noises, sometimes just behind him, sometimes in the corridor ahead. Each time, he'd have to make a hasty escape in the opposite direction.

He was pretty sure there was something stalking him. One or more nightmarish creatures hunting him down.

Unless he was just getting paranoid. He had yet to actually see any monsters. All those noises could easily be his mind playing tricks on him. The Doctor would probably have explained away the groans and howls as part of the workings of the TARDIS, and then laughed at him for being so jumpy.

Charlie ducked inside a room, hearing the roar of some dreadful creature down the corridor.

He pressed his ear against the cold metal door, listening for the monster, waiting for it to pass.

He heard nothing.

He daren't go back out there.

Instead, he decided to scout the room he was hiding out in.

There was a polished brass plaque above the door, bearing the engraving 'armoury'.

Charlie frowned. It was unlike the Doctor to keep weapons. But if he did, then there was a chance he'd find something to fight with.

He looked around. There were rows of racks, and shelves, like a DIY store.

"I should have guessed…" he muttered, with a wry smile.

There weren't any weapons in here. If there ever had been, they'd been stripped out, and replaced.

The shelves were stacked with books. Old and new, future and alien. Objects that weren't even books.

"Best weapons in the world," he muttered.

Something the Doctor often said. The right word here or there, and you could change the course of history. Whole armies could turn and run at the drop of a name.

And there could be nothing more powerful than a good story, the Doctor often reminded him. He had sparked revolutions just by telling a story.

And the Doctor told amazing stories – he had so many. He often claimed that all of his stories were true.

Charlie was always in awe of the Doctor's tales. They could be extremely inspiring, but he never felt inspired to tell his own stories. He had never thought any story he could tell would be one worth listening to. They could never be as good, or as exciting, or as well versed.

In amongst all the volumes, there was an entire row filled with glass bottles, tightly packed together. They each contained different coloured gases.

Charlie picked one up at random. It whispered intently at him. The words were indecipherable; an alien language.

He carefully returned it, sliding it back into its dusty space.

 _Smash!_

Charlie whirled round. He'd accidentally knocked one of the glass bottles off the end of the shelf.

He knelt down, to brush aside the shards of glass.

The previously contained gas was spilling out of the bottle, clinging to the floor like mist; blossoming and expanding.

Without warning, it exploded in a puff of black smoke, and enveloped him. The gas slithered into his nostrils, suffocating him.

It smelled of musty, damp straw. It was incredibly potent, conjuring up a memory from his childhood.

No – not his childhood – someone else's.

He was standing in an old hut, lashed together with straw and planks of wood. There was a pile of rusted machinery leaning against the wall, and the floor was buried under a desert of sand.

It was night; moonlight spilled in through the cracks in the walls.

The place seemed abandoned – nobody came here. It was just a dumping ground for old and broken things.

An old, cracked mirror perched on a bale of straw caught his attention. He looked into it for a moment.

The crack ran straight through the centre, dividing his face into two.

He reached towards it, half recalling there was something significant about mirrors in dreams.

That was when he noticed movement just behind his reflection.

Startled, Charlie turned round. There was someone else in here with him.

It was a kid, hunched in the corner. He was crying. He couldn't see the kid's face, buried in his arms. Only his dark, wavy hair.

It evoked memories of Poppy, and the other children in that orphanage. Except this boy was sobbing uncontrollably. He was trying to keep quiet, but he couldn't help the noise he was making.

Charlie's heart tugged at him. Should he say something? Or should he try and slip away without being noticed?

He wondered if this was a child the Doctor had met. Someone the Doctor had stumbled upon in his travels across all of time and space, and stopped to help. It was exactly the sort of thing he'd do.

He looked at the boy again. It looked like he'd been abandoned – left all alone in the dark. Perhaps he'd had a nightmare. Either way, Charlie knew how he felt. He couldn't just leave him.

He didn't really know what to say, but he needed to say something – try and comfort him.

"Hey…?"

The boy didn't seem to hear him.

"Hey, don't…"

 _Don't cry._

The words caught in his throat. What could he do? What could he say to make things better?

"Please don't…"

 _Please don't cry._

The boy's sobbing was softer, now. If he had heard, he wasn't making any effort to reply. But even so, Charlie's presence seemed to calm him a little.

Charlie sat down next to him, pressing his back up against the wall and cleared his throat.

"Actually, I can't think of a single reason why you shouldn't despair right about now. Especially not after what I've seen today."

He glanced nervously at the boy.

"Sometimes, I look at the world. The worlds. And there's… so much bad. So much fear, and hate, and suffering. And it makes me want to…"

Charlie shook his head.

"What I'm trying to say is, you might feel like you're alone. But you're not. Not really."

The kid didn't move. He still wasn't sure if he was listening.

Charlie sighed.

"You probably don't believe me. In fact, I know you don't believe me, because I never believed anyone who said that."

The kid had stopped crying, and looked up at him, face blotchy, red from tears, eyebrows arched.

"I had a nightmare," the kid mumbled, his voice fractured.

Charlie nodded, and tried to smile reassuringly.

"That's okay. I was having a nightmare too."

Charlie took a deep breath before continuing. "Everyone gets scared sometimes, I think. Even if they don't admit it. And sometimes the things that scare you aren't the things you think you should be scared of."

The kid frowned, apparently unsure what Charlie meant.

Charlie realised that his thoughts were drifting, and he returned his reassuring attention to the kid.

"Do you know how strong you are?" Charlie asked him.

The boy shook his head.

"All those nightmares, all the monsters, and the bad dreams. We can survive them," Charlie promised. "How do I know that? Because we always do. We're made of stronger stuff, you and me."

Charlie nudged him, but the boy looked shyly away again.

"It gets worse every night," he croaked quietly. "The nightmares are getting worse. And I'm just so scared, I can't go to sleep."

Charlie nodded. He understood. In those past few months, before he met the Doctor, he had nightmares. Nightmares so vivid, he had difficulty grasping the thought that they weren't real.

"Do you know what I used to do when I was scared?"

The boy turned to him again, his eyes wide and anxious, pleading for help. Desperate for something – anything that could stop the nightmares.

"I used to imagine there was someone out there – this… watcher, who fought off all those monsters. Protected us all. Made things better." Charlie smiled slightly at the thought. "I never thought he actually existed. But he does. If the monsters are real, then he is too."

The boy picked at a piece of straw, stewing in his sorrows.

"You feeling better, yeah?" Charlie prompted him.

"A little," he muttered.

Charlie nodded, and made to get up.

"Wait," the kid urged, "Please don't leave me alone."

Charlie hesitated. He really should go – he needed to find the Doctor.

However, he didn't have the heart to abandon this kid. He knew the Doctor wouldn't, so he sat back down again.

The morning could be a long way off yet – he had no idea what planet he was on – but he was prepared to stay with this kid, and keep him safe.

After a while, the boy leant against his arm.

Charlie wasn't sure what to do, so carefully put his arm over the boy's shoulder.

"You're not alone," Charlie muttered.

The boy rubbed away some of his tears, and managed a smile.

"Thanks."

Charlie didn't feel the need to say anything else to the kid. He just needed a friend to be with him right now.

Hours passed in silence. The only noise Charlie could hear were the rhythmic sounds of their gentle breathing.

Finally, a moment to stop running. A moment to rest.

But he knew this dream would come to an end, and Charlie was seriously dreading the moment the next nightmare came.


	10. Lost and Found

The Doctor shifted the stethoscope around the surface of the bubble containing all of Charlie's thoughts and memories.

He listened intently to the murmur of voices and sounds, like a safebreaker cracking open a vault, until he came across the thing he was searching for. That name again, whispered in a dream. _Nate_.

"Who is he?" the Doctor wondered. "Who's Nate?"

He continued eavesdropping on Charlie's life. Any further mention of the name was immediately followed by a furious hiss of static. His search was yielding no results. Charlie had locked him out.

The Doctor pulled away, and stared at the glimmering bubble, puzzled.

"And more importantly, _why_ don't you want me to know?"

The Doctor thumped his forehead. "What have I missed? What else have I seen that doesn't make sense?"

He pondered on this for a moment, recalling snapshots of their adventures. Charlie asking him all those questions in a playground, whilst the Doctor busied himself with a less-than-successful contraption. Charlie in the Observation Deck on the UNIT Moonbase, before he was captured by the Arachnids and presented to their queen.

He whirled round, pointing suddenly at the bubble and roaring: "The Arachnid Queen! You defeated it."

The Doctor frowned, glaring at his reflection in the shimmering orb. Or it might have been Charlie's memory of his face. Did he always look that grumpy?

"You must have defeated it. Because somebody did, and it wasn't me."

The Doctor concentrated, probing Charlie's memory of the event for an answer.

 _The Queen lunged at the Doctor. He had dodged all of the monster's attacks this far – but his luck had run out. This time, he was too slow._

 _The Arachnid sank her fangs into his arm, and the Doctor gasped – and crumpled to the floor._

 _Charlie couldn't move. He was trapped – bound in the Arachnids' webs. The sensation of a million unhatched spiderlings churned in his stomach._

 _He was watching in horror, praying for the Doctor to get up – to show some sign of life. But there was nothing._

 _Pure rage flooded through his mind. The Arachnid Queen scuttled around, flecks of venom spitting from her vicious fangs._

 _Just as the Arachnid was about to strike, she stopped, and backed away, quivering, curling up into the smallest size possible._

 _And then -_

Nothing.

That was it. That was all Charlie remembered. After that, he must have blacked out, or forgotten.

"That doesn't make sense," the Doctor whispered. "You stopped the Arachnid Queen – but you don't know how?"

The Doctor frowned, as his exploration led to a discouraging development. There was a thin wisp floating inside the bubble – exactly like one of the dark shapes pounding on the outside of the bubble.

That meant only one thing – something had found him.

"I've been here too long," the Doctor realised.

He opened his eyes. He was back on the Time Lords' ship, in the middle of a warzone.

Back to the TARDIS. Without a doubt, it was where Charlie would have gone.

This nightmare was at its close. Very soon, he would be torn away

He began to run, shoving his way through confused Time Lord soldiers. He didn't have time for them. He needed to find Charlie before it was too late.

* * *

Charlie coughed, and spluttered, and immediately sat bolt upright.

He was somewhere new. Still inside the TARDIS, but he had no idea where.

 _Not again._ Was he ever going to get out of this endless maze?

He stood up, exhausted.

He brushed the straw and dust from his clothes, and took a deep breath.

 _Find the Doctor. Find the Doctor, and save him._

That was all that mattered right now.

Charlie wasn't sure how long he walked for. Every stretch of corridor looked the same.

What he did know was that the soles of his feet were beginning to ache, and blister.

In a dream, time is not relative. Days pass in minutes, seconds last for eternity.

And sometimes, you find yourself somewhere with no real knowledge of how you ended up there.

One moment, Charlie had been walking past a swimming pool – which didn't look like it belonged inside the TARDIS at all - and the next, he was standing in front of a door. A plain metal door, just like all the others along this corridor.

At his feet, lay a welcome mat, which read: _'go away'_.

It was weird, and so passive-aggressive, it had to be Doctor's.

His heart pounded – had he finally found him?

He was about to push the door open when someone tapped him on the shoulder.

He span round.

"Doctor?" he uttered in disbelief.

The Doctor grinned.

"There you are, Charlie. I've been looking for you."

"But…" Charlie struggled to question him; his relief at finally finding the Doctor eclipsed everything else. "What happened? Did you save her?"

The Doctor threw him a puzzled expression. "Who?"

"The old woman. Mrs Madigan. The one from the orphanage?"

The Doctor's eyes lit up, as he remembered. "Oh, yes. Her."

His features dipped back into a frown. "No."

"Oh…" mumbled Charlie. "But we can still save you, right?"

The Doctor held out his hand. His veins were visibly pulsing with a dark green fluid.

"I don't know. Time Lord biology is very complicated."

Charlie clasped the Doctor's hand, examining it. His skin felt dry; cracked and cold. He did not look healthy.

The Doctor's eyes flickered up to him, and he sharply withdrew his hand. "I have a question for _you_."

Charlie looked up at the Doctor's glowering expression.

"Why are you trying to save me?"

He seemed genuinely cross with him. As though the fact that Charlie was trying to help him irked him somewhat.

The corner of Charlie's mouth twitched.

"What… what do you mean _why_?" he managed.

"I think it's a fairly obvious question," the Doctor growled.

"I think there's a fairly obvious answer!" Charlie retorted, quickly taking a defensive stance.

"Which is…?"

The whites of the Doctor's grey eyes were shining with fury. Charlie couldn't understand it.

"Uh, because I'm lost in the TARDIS, and – should I ever find my way back to the control room - I don't know how to fly it?" Charlie uttered in desperation, "And… I really don't want you to die!"

He wasn't lying. Honestly, he wasn't. Why couldn't the Doctor see?

The Doctor's scowl softened. "Oh, that's very nice of you."

He clapped Charlie gently on the shoulder, and bounded away down the corridor.

Charlie's jaw dropped.

"Okay…?"

He wasn't sure what had just happened, but he was willing to go with it – as long as the Doctor was back – and dashed after him.

"How to save me, then," the Doctor mused, as they walked.

Charlie wasn't sure where they were heading, but the Doctor seemed to know his way.

"If I could jump start the regeneration process, I might yet survive. But first, we need to find the source of the Arachnid venom."

"The source?" questioned Charlie. "But I thought the Arachnid Queen was… destroyed?"

"No." The Doctor frowned, his attention snapping back to Charlie. "No, sorry, yes, the Arachnid Queen _was_ destroyed. But the venom is still spreading. I can feel it growing darker every minute. Which means the venom is being fabricated somewhere in my body."

The Doctor rubbed his chin, lost in thought. "That's actually a really clever mechanism…"

There was a _clang_ , echoing from the corridor ahead of them.

They stopped, and waited.

Silence.

"What was that noise?" Charlie asked, in a far higher-pitched voice than he intended.

"I don't know. But considering every other noise I've heard so far has turned out to be a hideous nightmare, it's not looking promising," the Doctor muttered.

"Great…" Charlie groaned, staring pensively into the darkness.

Their shadows seemed to dance; dancing the dance of despair. Imaginary shapes swirled as his eyes struggled to make sense of the dark.

He heard the noise again.

 _Clang!_

Something was coming; edging, shuffling along the TARDIS corridor.

And the Doctor was waiting for it, an ominous glare on his face, willing the darkness to do its worst.

"Are you scared?" the Doctor suddenly asked.

Charlie looked up, into the Doctor's piercing glare.

He had had this revelation before. The Doctor had this presence. Whether it was wisdom, or pure determination, Charlie felt safe by his side. If the Doctor was there, he was going to be okay.

"No," Charlie answered.

"Then you're an idiot," the Doctor muttered sharply.

"Thanks…" Charlie grunted.

 _Clang! Thump!_

Whatever this thing was, it was coming closer.

All Charlie's instincts were screaming at him to run. He tried to move, but the Doctor grabbed his hoodie, holding him in place.

"That's incredible," the Doctor uttered.

"What is?" Charlie glanced around. The Doctor had seen something, but he had no idea what.

"There's nothing there," he pointed out.

The Doctor shook his head, reaching out with his other arm to point at the corridor.

"Look at the floor."

"Oh!" Charlie retreated slightly when he saw what the Doctor was pointing at.

There was a shadow creeping across the floor.

It looked to be a humanoid figure, shuffling slowly towards them.

But there was nothing else there – nothing which could be casting that shadow.

"Don't let the shadows touch you," the Doctor hissed.

Charlie's skin crawled. He was itching just thinking about all the terrible things that could befall him.

"Why? What'll happen?" Charlie asked.

"Don't get caught up in the details," the Doctor retorted, "Just don't let them touch you!"

"Okay, okay, I get it."

He was sure the Doctor knew what he was doing, but nonetheless, he was starting to get a little edgy about the Doctor keeping him pinned in place.

The creeping shadow stopped, a couple of metres from them.

The Doctor, lips pursed, silently pulled the sonic screwdriver from his pocket.

He pointed the device at the shadow; the screwdriver hummed.

The shadow evaporated into a mist. Tendrils of wispy smoke swirled around each other before transforming into an ethereal figure.

It was weirdly distorted, but definitely a person, with a ghostly visage and strange, loose clothing, which seemed to be floating – lighter than air – at the extremes.

The clothes were familiar, but Charlie couldn't think why. They were old fashioned: a waistcoat and jacket, with a large collared shirt and chequered trousers.

"What is that?" Charlie whispered.

The Doctor's eyebrows twitched; his screwdriver still outstretched.

"The same as the others, I imagine," he muttered.

Charlie frowned. As he was about to question what the Doctor meant, he was released from the Time Lord's grasp, and they both turned around.

There were more shadowy figures behind them – half a dozen at least.

"Woah!" Charlie took a step back, but remembered that there was one behind him, and returned to the Doctor's side.

"Who are they?"

The Doctor peered at them in horror.

"They're… me."

Charlie shot an incredulous glance at him. "What do you mean, they're you?"

"They're my other selves. Twisted shadows of my former lives."

Charlie looked more closely at the figures, and realised what the Doctor meant: the shadows, although faceless entities, wore the garments belonging to the Doctor. Long scarves, trench coats, braces and bowties, leather jackets and… and was that a stick of celery?

He wasn't sure exactly _how_ he knew this, but these were clothes that the Doctor used to wear, when he was… someone else?

"Regeneration…" Charlie breathed in realisation. "This is when your face changes after you die? You were trying to tell me about it before."

"My entire body changes," the Doctor corrected him, "Every cell is renewed. My DNA is re-coded. I become a completely new man."

They twisted round, trying to keep back from the shadows slowly advancing towards them, ghostly limbs outstretched.

"Are these real?" Charlie asked.

"That depends."

"On what?"

"On what reality is."

Charlie paused for a moment, trying to work out what the Doctor was telling him. "No, I don't get you."

"Reality is just an illusion," the Doctor explained, "Everything you think you see is simply what your mind stitches together."

"So…"

"Sight is just one of the ways you make sense of the world."

The Doctor locked him with a fierce glare. "There are more sensory stimuli in the universe, and in my head – which you're filtering out simply because you don't have the capacity to perceive them."

After a moment, Charlie broke away from the Doctor's gaze.

"Okay, no, I don't like this. Stop making my question my existence."

"These are four dimensional entities," the Doctor growled, throwing his arm towards one of them, "They're not existing now, relative to us. They're in the past… the future…"

"But they can still get us, right?" Charlie asked, dreading the thought that he _had_ already guessed the Doctor's response.

"Of course they can."

Charlie gritted his teeth, as he watched one of the shadow Doctors reach towards them, its arm passing through one of the others. As it stepped through its ghostly counterpart, the air crackled with static; Charlie's hairs on his arms and neck stood erect.

As he watched this shadow with increasing fascination, he noticed that there was something different about it.

"Uh, if they're all meant to be you, then… who's she?" he asked the Doctor.

"Shh!" the Doctor hissed. "Spoilers!"

Charlie immediately clamped his mouth shut.

There were more questions he wanted to ask, but his automatic response to the Doctor's command had silenced him.

Besides, it wasn't important right now. He could file it under _'things to think about when you are_ not _being chased by monsters'_.

Right now, they needed an escape.

Charlie twisted round, searching for an exit which wasn't cut off by a shadowy figure.

The Doctor noticed him, and threw him a wry smile.

Charlie found his apparent lack of concern wildly frustrating, and he had to suppress an urge to scream at him to help find a way out of this.

Of course, the Doctor had a reason for his smug grin.

"There's another way out," Charlie realised, studying the Doctor's facial expression. "Where?"

"You're looking in the wrong direction," the Doctor hinted.

Charlie peered through the ethereal figures – but he couldn't see a way past them.

After a few moments, it dawned on him.

He looked up. There was an aperture in the ceiling above them.

The sly devil…

"How do we get up there?" Charlie asked.

The ceiling wasn't that high, but it was still further than either of them could reach. And with a horde of shadows closing in on them, they didn't have much time to think of a solution.

"It's okay. We're standing on an elevator," the Doctor assured him.

"Wow. _Really?_ "

The Doctor answered Charlie by flicking on the sonic screwdriver.

The corridor, and the shadows, around them fell sharply away.

The aperture twisted open, like a metal iris.

They burst through onto another level, and the Doctor clapped his hands together in delight.

So _this_ was why the Doctor had kept him pinned in this spot – it was their only escape route.

"There you go, Charlie," the Doctor lectured him, "That's the secret to surviving in this universe. Always have a cunning and overly theatrical escape plan."

"Sure…" Charlie uttered.

The Doctor's triumphant exit was short-lived, however. Moments later, the shadows began seeping up through the floor panels.

To these creatures, 'up' was not a direction which hindered them.

"Uh, Doctor…?"

"When I say run, run," the Doctor whispered.

"Why don't we just run _now?_ " Charlie exclaimed.

The Doctor threw him a thoughtful glare.

"Uh… yeah, go on then."

The dark wisps billowed out from the gaps in the floor grating, and began materialising into Doctor-like forms once more.

Charlie didn't hesitate to watch; he turned and bolted.

As they raced down the TARDIS corridors, Charlie's mind drifted back to the first time he and the Doctor ran. That panic at being chased by terrifying monsters, still fresh as ever.

Unlike that first time, however, his legs were holding out. Who knew that running from deadly dangers could be such a workout?

"In there," the Doctor yelled, his arm outstretched, pointing towards another identical door.

The Doctor practically shoved Charlie through the doorway, and heaved the heavy bulkhead closed behind them.

The sonic fired up, and the door's deadbolts slammed shut.

It was a very deliberate, final sound – as though this exit was now permanently sealed.

"We should be safe in here," the Doctor muttered, breathless, shoving the screwdriver back into his jacket pocket, and leaning back against the deadlocked door.

Charlie wasn't sure that a door could keep the weird time shadows out, but hey, the Doctor seemed confident that it would. That was good enough for him.

* * *

 **Author's Notes:**

 **I realise the resolution of the last adventure wasn't really-**

 **Trdpcbrf. Jpkd pm! Ejsy'd jsoowmws?**

* * *

++INCOMING MESSAGE++

There we go. That's enough of that. No-one wants to hear about all this. I think I'll take over now.

Ah yes! Reader. There you are. I've been waiting for you. Don't worry, it's nothing sinister.

Who am I, you might be asking? Actually, you might not, but I'll tell you anyway.

I am known as _the Voice of Unreason_. Yes! I quite like the sound of that.

Seeing as how you're invested and such (I mean, you're still here), I might as well take the opportunity to do my thing.

You know, just being a nuisance and stuff. I am the author's nemesis, much like the Master is the Doctor's enemy.

So I'm here to undermine things, and add a bit of culture and _gravitas_ to the proceedings. Sort of an experimental thing, if I'm honest. Just in case this tale of heroics, grievances and getting lost inside the Doctor's mind wasn't enough.

Spoilers: the Doctor dies. But then you already knew that.

Sorry for the author's long chapter, have a Sontaran.

 _Sontar-Ha!_

* * *

++ADDITIONAL MESSAGE++

Actually, I'm just messing. I have no idea what will happen to the Doctor and Charlie.

I'm just a fourth wall breaking character. (Do fanfics have a fourth wall?)


	11. Just Stories in the End

"What is this place?" Charlie asked, glancing around at a circle of doors.

They were in some kind of antechamber, free from any kind of decoration, or any indication of the purpose of this room. There were just doors – maybe thirty or forty of them.

Each door was unique, adorned with a different pattern, or style. Some were simple industrial bulkheads, much like the others in the TARDIS. Others were heavy, oak-panelled affairs.

In the centre of the space, there was an opening in the floor, protected from a fatal fall by a thin rail.

Charlie leaned over, and peered into the abyss. Immediately, his head began to spin, and he pulled himself away from the edge. It was a _long_ way down.

They must have been hundreds of floors up. Each floor looked to be very similar to the one they were standing on now, filled with a number of doors.

"This is my storeroom," the Doctor informed him. "It's where I store people in my mind."

Charlie threw him a puzzled look as he pulled away from the railing.

The Doctor shrugged. "I find it helps to keep things in order. So many humans. It's difficult to remember them all."

"I'd noticed." Charlie nodded, walking over to the nearest door, and examining it.

There was a cracked painted pattern decorating this one.

Like all the other doors, it was inscribed with a name. He couldn't read all the letters on it; the hand-painted calligraphic script was peeling away. He wasn't quite sure what it should have said. Perhaps _Johanna? Jovanka?_

The Doctor appeared beside him, and pressed his fingertips against the wooden panels, tracing the cracks in the paintwork. He seemed lost in his thoughts.

Charlie hated to interrupt, but he was curious.

"Who's this?"

The Doctor turned to him, his grey eyes searching in alarm, before turning sharply away.

"Just a story," he muttered quietly, "They're all just stories, now."

As Charlie looked around, following the circle of doors, he saw more names – more stories, ones he didn't recognise. There was even a door with no name, only gold circular etchings.

Spotting a name he knew made his stomach lurch: Emily Simmons. One of the scientists on the Moonbase, whom the Doctor may once have travelled with.

So was this… everyone the Doctor had travelled with?

It must have been a vast complex, filled with the memories of everyone the Doctor had ever known. The floors descended further than he could see. There must have been hundreds of them. Hundreds of friends. Hundreds of names, and faces, and people the Doctor couldn't quite remember.

"You've had so many friends…" Charlie wasn't sure what to say. He was hit once again by the overwhelming feeling that he just wasn't important.

"And lost all of them," the Doctor mused.

He didn't dare ask what had happened to the others. Had they moved on? Had they just left him? Or had they grown old and died, while the Doctor remained in the TARDIS, never aging, never stopping to think about who was gone, who he'd left behind?

The Doctor had wondered off, examining some of the other doors more closely. His body language indicated a reluctance to enter any of them.

This left Charlie to his own thoughts, when he received a bit of a shock.

And there it was. He didn't know why he hadn't seen it before. A door with his name on it.

It looked rather like the front door to his house. Not exactly like it, but very similar. He put that down to the Doctor not having paid that much attention to it.

It was right next to what appeared to be a teacher's office door, graffitied with the words: 'Ozzie loves PE'. (Not sure what that meant). He grasped the doorhandle, but a heavy clunk told him that it was locked.

It didn't matter. Charlie was more curious as to what was behind his own door in the Doctor's mind.

He pulled out his house key, and tried it in the lock.

He hadn't expected it to work, but there was a _snap_ , and the door swung open.

As he was about to place his foot over the threshold, the Doctor grabbed his shoulder. It made him jump. He hadn't heard the Doctor come back over.

"Don't go in there," the Doctor hissed sharply.

"Why not?" Charlie challenged him.

"You might not like it."

Charlie held his stern gaze for a moment, and broke free from the Doctor's grip, his curiosity overcoming him.

It was like stepping into a different world. Details blasted out at him; a thousand things called for his attention at once.

It was a small, dingy room, poorly lit with a single, naked bulb suspended from the ceiling. There was a large board in the centre of the room, covered with scraps of paper, newspaper clippings, and bits of string – like the scene of a murder investigation.

Charlie glanced through some notes, scrawled in what he took to be the Doctor's handwriting. His heart sank, deeper and deeper as he read the words the Doctor had written about him: 'Wraith?', 'Dreamer', 'Liar'… 'VYPER', 'Cleverer than he looks', 'Hiding something'…

He plucked off a UNIT memo, stapled to the board. There were only three words printed on it, beneath the winged logo: 'Don't trust him.'

It didn't make sense.

Why would UNIT, which he had only encountered once, think this about him? What did they know?

He turned back to the Doctor, stood in the doorway, the light from the bulb barely illuminating his face.

"What is all this?"

The Doctor chuckled. Clearly, he was amused by Charlie's distress.

"I knew you couldn't resist," the Doctor threw him a crooked grin.

Charlie faltered. The memo fluttered from his fingers.

The Doctor took very deliberate steps towards him, leaning uncomfortably close to his ear, hissing: "You thought you knew him, didn't you?"

"What?" Charlie uttered, his skin prickling. Words caught in his throat, and he felt sick.

Something was wrong. Those words… he'd heard them before.

He'd walked straight into a trap.

The man standing in front of him wasn't who he thought it was. This was a trick of the mind. An imitation – and a startlingly good one at that.

Even so, he couldn't believe he'd been fooled so easily.

"You're… not the Doctor?" The words barely escaped his lips in an estranged whisper.

"No, of course not," the Doctor answered, after a while, "I am a nightmare."

The Doctor's eyes flashed with a hint of malevolence.

Charlie took a step away, but found that the board was blocking his way.

"Are you one of those shadows?" he guessed.

"A shadow of the Doctor? I am far more than that. I have followed you all this way, and yet,"

The Doctor tilted his head thoughtfully. "Always in the Doctor's shadow. The shadow of the Valeyard. Perhaps I _am_ his dark side…"

He broke into a malicious grin – a remorseless curl of the lips which did not belong to the Doctor.

"It's funny," The Doctor snaked past him, his fingers brushing against one of the notes on the board. "You're struggling to make sense of the Doctor's thoughts, but you can see this so clearly.

"Does this room scare you?"

Charlie watched as the Doctor's fingernail zigzagged across the word 'VYPER'.

"No."

"That's a lie," the Doctor casually dismissed him. "The very _idea_ of this room terrifies you."

The Doctor stroked his chin for a moment. "Not 'terrifies'… unsettles, perhaps."

That fierce, alien gaze pierced him. "You thought he trusted you?"

"No," Charlie uttered, a little more confidently this time.

"No? What?" the Doctor queried, glaring at him in confusion. "What do you mean, 'no'?"

"I never thought he trusted me," Charlie answered honestly, "Not really. This just confirms that he's been lying to me."

Charlie pointed at the scribbles on the board behind him.

"But I don't blame him."

The Doctor shook his head, embers of anger flaring up.

"No, no. You were supposed to say 'yes', and then I was going to say _'does he really? Then why don't you know his real name?'_ "

"Well obviously, he doesn't tell anyone his real name," Charlie argued, matching the shadow's fury, "Besides, he's an alien. I probably won't even be able to pronounce it."

He shrugged, feigning confidence, despite his fear.

"All right then, smart-arse," the Doctor rounded on him, flecks of spittle spewing from his teeth. "Answer me this: do _you_ trust him?"

"Yes." Charlie's response was almost immediate. It scared him a little, how quick he was to admit that.

"Really?" the Doctor laughed.

The Doctor's laughter turned sharply to contempt. "Because if I'm not mistaken, you've just seen the Doctor's true self. A _coward_. He left a whole planet to die because he was scared. And the Time War. The horrors of the Time War! He butchered Daleks and Time Lords alike. Billions of innocents were slaughtered in the crossfire."

Charlie struggled to hold the shadow Doctor's furious gaze.

"He wields so much power, and the universe suffers in the wake of the Storm."

"I trust the Doctor," Charlie maintained.

"No you don't," the shadow Doctor snapped, pressing his fingertips against Charlie's chest. He was pinned in place by a powerful amount of pressure.

"I…" Charlie faltered.

"You don't even know who he is," the shadow growled, "Everything you think you know about that man is a lie."

The Doctor pulled his fingers away, sliding them across his face to conceal a smirk.

"How can you trust someone you don't even know? Especially when you know he doesn't trust _you_."

The Doctor chuckled.

"He doesn't trust you because you're a liar, Charlie," he simpered.

"You've been lying to the Doctor. You've been lying to yourself."

"No… I'm not lying… I'm just not… not ready…" Charlie protested.

"It doesn't matter. _I_ see through your lies. I know what you fear. I can almost… _taste_ it."

"I don't know what you mean."

The Doctor shrugged, taking a step away.

"It's time to end this little adventure," he said simply. "I could give you everything you want, but it comes at a price."

"What price…?"

"The Doctor."

The shadow sighed, exhausted.

"It's time to end the Doctor. Let him die."

Exhaustion. Fury. Emotions turned to manipulate him; make him feel afraid.

"Let him die, Charlie," the thing roared.

Charlie's perception of the room began to shift. The Doctor grew larger, as the walls began to extrude into oblivion.

The unimaginable horrors from the Doctor's mind began to skulk towards him, swirling at the heels of the commanding shadow.

"No, no…"

"Let him die! And I shall rise!"

The shadow Doctor's words echoed around his mind, ringing and burning.

"No!" Charlie screamed.

He made a break for the door. It was drifting further away from him – faster than he could run.

"You can't escape from me, Charlie. I will find you. I have already found you."

* * *

He began to fall, smashing through something on his way down. It took him a moment to focus on the police box doors spinning away.

He fell straight through the control room, unable to grab onto something – the console, a railing – anything.

Nate's voice spoke to him; the words of the TARDIS rang out all around, as Charlie was swallowed up in the depths of the time machine.

 _Every TARDIS you enter takes you deeper into the Doctor's consciousness._

 _Be careful how far you fall, lest you never return._

 _How far will you go?_

 _Never return…_

 _How far…?_

* * *

 **++INCOMING MESSAGE++  
**

Man, how many references can you get away with cramming into one chapter?

So of course that wasn't the Doctor. It was an evil shadow thingy.

Now of course, I wouldn't know anything about that...


	12. Listen

**Meanwhile, the _real_ Doctor is still trapped in one of his nightmares...**

* * *

It was quieter down in the belly of the Time Lord warship.

The Doctor pulled out the sonic to open a hatch in the floor, but discovered it was already unlocked.

He scrambled down the ladder into a landing bay, his boots barely touching the metal rungs as he descended.

He'd only been here once before – but he always remembered where he parked the TARDIS. And there she was, the paintwork scratched and worn away from the fires of war.

He sped towards it, hoping she would let him in this time, when he felt a strange sensation around his waist. It was like a burning wire, working its way around him.

He'd felt this before. Another nightmare was beckoning.

The Doctor was inches away from the TARDIS. If he was just a little quicker, he could still reach it.

The invisible wire jerked suddenly, pulling him onto his back.

As he crashed to the floor, the lights above him flared in a blinding kaleidoscope of shapes.

* * *

When his vision cleared, he was looking not at the geometric patterns of a Gallifreyan roof, but a dying alien sky. The twin suns burned weakly; their heat fierce though a thin veil of a torched atmosphere, not bright enough to eclipse the few brighter stars beyond.

"No!" he yelled, slamming his fists into the dusty ground.

He had been so close. No doubt he was now lost in another awful memory. Another day he would much rather forget.

He tussled uselessly with the sand beneath him before he sat up.

He looked around at the blackened ruins surrounding him. He could see miles of it. This world had burned.

Had he done this? That was the Doctor's first thought. Was he responsible for the destruction of this planet?

 _No_. No, it couldn't be. The Doctor never forgot the mistakes he made, and this was not one of them.

"So where am I?" he croaked, staggering to his feet.

He was struggling to breathe. The air was fire in his lungs. He could taste the ash still floating in the air, even though this world had been devastated centuries ago.

There was a feeling that things were coming to an end. It was an intangible aura this world held, which the Doctor noticed because of his unique connection to the universe as a Time Lord. The planet had maybe a few hundred years left. It was on the verge of death, in the grand scheme of things.

A sharp pain ruptured his kidneys. The Doctor fell to his knees in agony, allowing a moment for the feeling to subside.

When he looked up again, he saw a woman, draped in heavy, dark robes, apparently unconcerned by the scorching temperature.

"Can you hear that?" she asked. Her voice was slow, her words drawn out in an almost uninterested drawl. The words were a passing remark towards something quite inconsequential.

"Hear what?" The Doctor jumped to his feet.

Something felt wrong about the woman – not just that she was the only other living thing on this dying world.

"Nothing," she said simply, her hand sweeping in a wide arc from beneath an excessive sleeve, "Silence."

"Don't," the Doctor grunted, "talk to _me_ about silence!"

A hint of a smile from the woman. As though the Doctor had misunderstood – and she was faintly amused by that.

"Everything has ended. Soon, you will too."

"I don't think so," the Doctor snapped defiantly.

"We are the last living souls. The only two left standing at the end of everything."

"Well, that all sounds rather lovely, and nothing if not a little verbose," the Doctor replied, his voice edged with a cynical politeness. "But you know where we are, I take it?"

"Don't you remember? Or does this not happen yet?" The woman gazed vacantly into the distance. "Or will it never happen?"

The Doctor put aside his suspicions about the woman: how she knew so much, how she was being so ominous, and how she could stand the heat in that robe.

If this was another nightmare, it was one he hadn't encountered before.

It was not impossible. The Doctor was a Time Lord. Things very rarely happened to him in a logical manner.

Time does not run a straight path. There are twists and turns, and oxbow lakes of alternate realities. There were things that never happened, things that may once have happened and then un-happened.

Time can be rewritten, and so can memories.

The sequence of events unfolding now may not be what it first appeared to be.

"You've seen this before," the woman hinted. "Your grave on Trenzalore?"

Yes, the Doctor had been to places in his future which no longer existed when he finally arrived there. His tomb on a planet devastated by a war he was responsible for being one of them. This world couldn't be like that, could it? Another _Trenzalore?_

"This is where I fall?" the Doctor uttered in disbelief.

"Perhaps. Perhaps you are already fallen? You are dying now, yes?"

The woman did not move. Her hands were still, now tucked away inside her robes.

"Your young friend, lost in your mind? He dies with you. The TARDIS drifts, to the end of the universe itself, and it dies too."

She laughs.

"That is funny," the Doctor agreed, waving his finger at the woman, "I've seen my grave before. More than once. I always my mind about dying when the time comes."

"You cannot escape the end of everything."

The Doctor nodded, clasping his hands together.

"You know, I wondered if we _were_ where I thought we were. The last world at the end of the universe. Which intrigues me…"

The woman inclined her head, listening.

"Who are you? I've been trying to work it out for the last few minutes, but I have to admit, I cannot imagine who else would have survived to the end of time."

The Doctor grinned. "Who else would live this long?"

"I am Vyper."

The grin dropped. "Vyper?" the Doctor exclaimed. " _You?_ "

A little nod from the woman.

The Doctor's mind quickly darted through a tangle of possible explanations, drawing conclusions from the few strands of information he had.

He had encountered VYPER on Solos Nine. It was a virus that had almost destroyed everyone in that virtual world. He and Charlie had stopped it, with a great deal of skill, determination, and more than a little blind luck.

"This isn't my nightmare," the Doctor concluded. "I traced the source of the Vyper virus."

"Did you now?"

"Charlie," he uttered, "It came from Charlie."

According to the corrupted system logs, the spread of the virus had begun at exactly the moment Charlie had been connected.

"Which means… Oh!"

The Doctor inhaled sharply, ignoring the sting of the air.

"The darkness. All that darkness inside my mind. It didn't come from me – it came from _him!_ " The Doctor's words were spilling out as fast as his realisations. "And he had absolutely no idea. All that time… I knew he couldn't be that strong."

His fingers grasped his hair for a moment, struggling to believe the conclusions he was drawing. However, it was the only logical explanation.

" _You_ destroyed the Arachnid Queen."

The woman smiled. Which meant he was right.

"Now it's time for me to destroy you, Doctor."

Oh, the confidence. The certainty! The Doctor silently applauded her.

The woman very carefully drew two long, curved blades out of her sleeves.

"Ah… One more thing. Last one, I promise," the Doctor quickly uttered, taking a step back.

"What?" the woman allowed him this moment, halting the swish of her blades.

"Do you know who Nate is?"

"Yes. Is that really your last question?"

The Doctor's eyebrows curled, adjusting the intensity of his frown.

"Well, I rather hoped you'd elaborate…"

"No. I don't care to do that."

"It's all tied together, somehow, isn't it? A great mystery, so conveniently packaged!" The Doctor kept talking, as he retreated. "Everything's right there, in front of me, but I can't see what it is."

He grinned, as the woman took slow steps towards him. Her feet were bare, evidently resistant to the burning sand.

"You think you've got me?" he teased her. "Right where I can't escape – where time is literally running out. If you don't kill me, the last seconds of life will. The universe's final breath… That's your nightmare – this is what you're afraid of?"

"I have no fear. I am nightmare," the woman's words were cruel, spat with such contempt, the Doctor knew he must have struck a nerve. "I will end your existence."

"Oh, you didn't know?" the Doctor chuckled. "You see, I've been to the end of the universe before. I'm sure I'll pop round again."

The woman scowled.

"The TARDIS is here. That's all I need to escape. To run away!" the Doctor declared.

"You're still dying."

"Oh yes. And only Charlie can save me! But he doesn't know how."

"And I suppose you do?"

"I don't need to know how," the Doctor protested chirpily, "Anyway. So long! Thanks for all the fish!"

With that, the Doctor turned and ran.

He had to catch up with Charlie. Who knew what he was facing in the depths of the Doctor's mind.

He had to be quick. He had lost too much time already.

The boy was slipping further away. Falling deeper into his conscious thoughts. To his subconscious thoughts.

He just hoped that his worst nightmare hadn't caught up with the boy.

* * *

 **++INCOMING MESSAGE++**

Makes you think, doesn't it? All those dreams, all those memories…

How much of your life really happened?

Can you trust your memories? Can you trust the history books?

How do we know if any of this is real?


	13. Mind Games

_The nightmares are coming. The nightmares are coming for me._

 _I can't let them win._

 _Through dark visions, I see._

 _And so I was entranced by the dance of the Doctors._

 _And the dance of death._

 _They twisted and changed all around me._

 _Chasing me and hounding me._

 _With every new turn there was another devil._

 _Another shadow of the Doctor._

 _And it was in one of these moments, I understood._

 _I understood the words of Mrs Madigan, and the nightmare children._

 _Reality is just an illusion._

 _But this is an illusion I might not wake up from._

 _I can't let them win._

 _I_ can't _let them win._

 _Charlie._

 _Charlie!_

 _It's calling my name._

 _Another one. Another Doctor. Another shadow. Another devil._

 _It could be him. Maybe it's the real one._

 _But how could I know for sure? How can I tell?_

 _How do I know he's real if reality is merely an illusion?_

* * *

Charlie fought his way through the TARDIS corridors, through its twisting, turning impossible dimensions.

He tripped and stumbled as the world began to rotate.

Like something straight out of _Inception_ , the walls swept round beneath his feet; his trainers snagged on the perforated metal beams which lined the corridor, converging into a spiral where the corridor stretched to infinity.

He went flying, and crashed into the ceiling, the skin grazed from his palms as he threw his hands out to protect his head.

The spinning was sickening, dizzying; a terrifying rollercoaster ride through time and space.

He pushed himself against the wall, and clamped his hands over his head, trying to shut everything out.

His sense of balance was screaming at him, deceiving him into believing he was turning upside down, out of control.

 _No,_ the words fled from his mouth, _no, no, no!_

His muscles were tense, twitching. Coiled springs, wound in tight knots.

He couldn't move. He didn't want to move.

 _Why did he have to die? Why?! Why did he have to die, and leave me in this nightmare?_

Two hands grabbed his shoulders – exactly in the way the Doctor would when he was trying to reassure him.

He flinched, and his arms locked tighter together.

If he didn't look, then it wouldn't be there. It would go away. It would leave him alone.

"Hey?" the Doctor whispered.

The Doctor's voice was gentle, but he no longer trusted it.

"I would say 'don't despair', but after what you've been through today…"

There was a sigh. The Doctor paused, reflecting on his words.

A warm tingle spread across Charlie's arm, calming him.

"I've seen so much hate, and fear. And I've done some terrible things. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if you were afraid of me, right now."

Charlie bit his lip, trying not to cry out.

"What I'm trying to say is: you're not alone," the Doctor was speaking quietly, "Not really.

"I know you don't believe me, because I didn't believe you."

Another sigh.

"I never believed you. Because I thought to myself: you have no idea. You have _no idea_ what's going on inside my head."

The Doctor's grip weakened, but his voice dipped into a grave tone.

"I'm a Time Lord. I walk in eternity. I've lived for thousands of years. And you're a simple human. Your knowledge, your experiences, cannot compare to mine."

The Doctor grunted, murmuring his next words.

"But Charlie. Charlie, _of course_ I don't know what's going on inside your head. Nobody else does. You've had your unfair share of life's worst experiences."

The Doctor had captured his full attention. He could hear every hesitation, every inflection, every strain of worry and emotion.

He wanted to look up, but he feared what he would see. He feared that it was not the Doctor, but another trick.

"I'm just truly sorry that you've had a glimpse of mine. My darkest days…

"You know I don't always win. I don't always make the right decisions. I'm definitely not the 'hero' you think I am."

He paused, and Charlie could imagine the Doctor's smile: warm, laced with a hint of sadness.

"But that won't ever stop us from trying."

Charlie looked up, his eyelids heavy.

The Doctor's steely grey eyes were shining.

"Do you know how strong you are?" he whispered.

Charlie tried to utter a response, but his breath was trapped.

"Nightmares. Monsters. My memories… we can survive them," the Doctor grinned, "Do you know why? _Because we always do._ We're made of stronger stuff, you and me, Charlie."

Charlie frowned. Those words were familiar…

The Doctor looked at him expectantly, and he remembered where he had heard the words before.

"Wait…"

Charlie had spoken them. Those were the words he had spoken to the crying child in that old barn.

"How do you know…?"

How could the Doctor have known what he had said…?

The Doctor's features wrinkled into a reminiscent grin.

"It's something a kind stranger once told me when I was little."

"But…?"

Charlie's sparking neurons zipped to and fro in his brain, desperately trying to put two and two together. That crying kid in the barn was… _the Doctor?_

"You? The kid in the barn?"

He had said those things to that kid without knowing who he was. He was just trying to help. He was just trying to be kind, like the Doctor. This meant the Doctor standing before him really _was_ the Doctor. This was the Doctor convincing Charlie he could be trusted.

"But…" Charlie tried to protest, despite the sudden revelation that he had seen what must have been a young Doctor. It was difficult to imagine the Doctor having ever been… as young as that. It had completely swept him away from his mindless flurry of fear.

"Come on Charlie, let's not get distracted," the Doctor urged. "We don't have long left."

Charlie's mind snapped back to the present – and the mission he was burdened with.

"You know how we can save you?"

The Doctor's eyes twinkled for a moment.

"Yes – ah!" he doubled over, swinging wildly backwards, as he was struck by some kind of spasm.

"Doctor?"

The Doctor gasped for breath, as he fell away, arms flailing. He hit the floor, hard.

Charlie realised he was still hunched up against a ceiling panel, and leapt down after the Doctor, quickly helping him to his feet.

"I can feel it. The venom's becoming more potent," he wheezed, clutching a metal beam running along the wall. "Pulling me closer and closer…"

The Doctor's hand snaked across the railing, tracing its path down the corridor.

"Closer to death…" He grinned. "Closer to where _we_ need to go."

The Doctor straightened himself up, smiling weakly as he adjusted his shirt cuffs.

"I'm fine," he muttered, as Charlie shot him yet another worried look.

"You don't look fine."

The Doctor shrugged. "It's the same 'fine' _you've_ been throwing back at me."

Charlie frowned, rather stunned by the Doctor's blasé manner. "You mean…"

"I mean: of course I'm not fine. And neither are you," the Doctor stated. "You know, it _is_ okay to admit that sometimes."

Charlie sighed, his chest tight, bound by all the little lies he'd woven around himself.

He tried to keep his facial expressions in check, but he found it impossible under the Doctor's stare. It was like he completely understood Charlie's embarrassment, his awkwardness, and his guilt.

"We can make it there, Charlie," the Doctor assured him, clasping his shoulders, "It's not going to be easy…"

"I don't think any of this has been easy," Charlie grumbled.

The Doctor's voice resonated with the weight of a thousand sad stories as he spoke: "Saving my life may very well be the last thing you do."

Charlie looked into the Doctor's watery grey eyes for a moment, and a grin played across his lips, fully aware of the irony of what he was about to respond with:

"I can live with that."

The Doctor released him, and momentarily lost in his thoughts, gave him a thumbs up.

Without saying another word, he began to walk.

* * *

 **++INCOMING MESSAGE++  
**

 _I get up when I want, except on Wednesdays, when I'm rudely awakened by a Sontaran battle fleet. Pond life!_

 _I put my bow tie on, have a cup of tea, and think about leaving Gallifrey..._

Ah, sorry. I didn't realise this chapter was over already.

So Charlie's found the real Doctor, now? He lets him know by repeating the words Charlie spoke to the kid in the barn. Well that's just lazy writing...

And I bet the kid was the same as the one from _Listen_.

Still, this isn't really happening, so it's not like Charlie's Clara'd all over the Doctor's timeline. Small mercies. Adherence to continuity and all that.


	14. InnerTimeAndSpace: the Fantastic Voyage

The corridor spat them out in a vast, impossible chamber.

It took a few seconds for Charlie's brain to process exactly what he was seeing – and even then, he couldn't make head nor tail of it.

They were inside a strange, MC Escher-sque palace; white marble staircases criss-crossing impossible dimensions, linking paths which couldn't conceivably be joined.

Trying to follow a straight line which somehow converged back on itself was making his eyes water, so Charlie turned to the Doctor, who was muttering thoughtfully to himself, his sharp gaze peering at the scene around them through his furrowed brows.

"…Castrovalva…" the Doctor murmured.

"I'm sorry?"

"A trap… the end… or merely the beginning…?" the Doctor continued in an ominous whisper, "For whom does the Cloister bell toll?"

"Are you okay?" Charlie enquired, tapping his elbow.

"What…?" the Doctor glared at him, a puzzled expression rippling across his aged features. "Yes?"

"Which way do we go?" asked Charlie, examining all the exits, archways twisting in all directions.

"I can't tell. This reality doesn't make sense."

"Reality's just an illusion?" Charlie recalled.

"Yes," the Doctor murmured thoughtfully, "You know, that's a very interesting perception."

Charlie frowned. "You told me that. Well, a weird shadow version of you did."

"A weird shadow version of me?" the Doctor queried, raising an eyebrow, "You don't mean the antibodies?"

"Uh… antibodies?" Charlie wasn't entirely sure what the Doctor was suggesting.

"Yes. They hunt down foreign objects – much like yourself. They get everywhere when I start regenerating," the Doctor rubbed his chin, "Sometimes they manifest themselves in my head as ghosts of my former lives." The Doctor shook his head disapprovingly. "It's very distracting. What is odd though, is that they don't speak."

A jolt of realisation hit him like a bolt of lightning. "You mean…?"

"Whoever told you that… it wasn't me. It wasn't from _my_ head."

The Doctor was glaring at him. Charlie immediately felt pressured into a response under the intensity of the Doctor's piercing gaze.

"You mean… there's something else in here? Something else in your mind, aside from us?"

"Yes." The Doctor continued to stare at him, as though he were expecting him to say more.

"It wants to kill us," Charlie warned, "It wants to kill _you_."

"I know." The Doctor shrugged, and turned away. "You don't happen to know what it is, do you?"

"No," Charlie admitted, "Do you?"

"No."

The Doctor ran his fingers along the rough stone wall of the TARDIS, struggling to get his bearings.

He began to hum, which Charlie found somewhat jarring, but also strangely reassuring.

 _"Don't get lost inside your head…"_

The Doctor frowned, and turned his owl-glare to Charlie. "Hmm. At least my subconscious still has a sense of humour."

Charlie bit his lip, and slid his hands into his trouser pockets – standing there quite awkwardly as the Doctor stared at him, unblinking, for an uncomfortable length of time.

"Um, Doctor?"

"Shh! Listening!" the Doctor hissed.

Charlie nodded, and automatically shut up.

"The way forward is just out of reach…" The Doctor whirled round, his gaze darting in all directions at the twisting roads bending all around them. He made a strange throaty growl as he whirled around.

"Oh, no! No, it's up there," he uttered brightly, pointing in a seemingly random direction – towards one of the many, impossible staircases.

Charlie followed the Doctor's gesture. "You can tell?"

"Yes, can't you hear the path?"

"I… what?"

Charlie peered at the Doctor, then back up at the misshapen archway the Doctor was pointing to.

Now he had grown accustomed to this strange world, he could hear something. It sounded like… a river? A trickling of water, splashing against rock and metal.

He began to see the droplets falling from the hairline strand of black oil, arcing across the space, each following a strange parabola which blossomed from their destination.

"You can hear the _river's song?_ " the Doctor grinned.

"Yeah!" Charlie breathed.

"Come on!"

He followed the Doctor, across those impossible Escher-esque paths. He did not enjoy the sensation of following one staircase and crossing gravity-defying boundaries into the next.

Still, they made it, breaching one last dizzying change in direction.

And there, just ahead of them, another of the Doctor's TARDIS.

The Doctor shot a glance at him – and they both knew what this meant now. They were about to enter another layer of consciousness.

"Stay close," the Doctor urged.

They followed the river inside. Charlie expected to see another version of the TARDIS console, but this time, it was nothing like that.

They had stepped into a giant watch, or perhaps a clocktower. Grinding gears and cogs - twice as tall as a man – rumbled as they twisted through the walls, scything the space into fragments. Charlie couldn't tell what the mechanisms were made of – if they were made of anything at all.

Now that he thought of it, he wasn't sure what he and the Doctor were made of. They were vague shapes, memories of humanoid forms.

Deep tolling bells hammered at his brain, erasing his thoughts. The only thing Charlie could be certain of, was that they were very much _here_. They were deeper inside the Doctor's consciousness, past memories, past subconscious thought. They were now in the foundations of his mind.

"It's coming for us," the Doctor growled, casting a glance over his shoulder.

"What is?"

"The slowing of your heartbeat. Death."

Their path twisted through the spinning gears; Charlie trusted the Doctor's timing as they jumped through swinging spokes, and oscillating blades swiping the air as they passed.

The Doctor danced and leapt through this vast and vicious industrial hell. His grace among the grease and dirt was inspiring; Charlie's clumsy imitation of the Doctor's skill was almost getting him killed.

The sheer size of the clanking machinery, suspended by invisible axles, finally hit him in drunken realisation. They were tiny. The snarling teeth of the cogs would chew them up, crush his bones.

What the hell was he doing? Why the hell was he wandering blindly into deadly peril?

The Doctor grabbed Charlie's hand, redirecting his focus. They were fleeing, fighting.

But the Doctor was losing. He could feel it. The Doctor was losing his battle against death. With every breath, he was failing.

Charlie experienced the Doctor's torment as though it were his own. He could feel his one heart struggling to pump his thick, congealing blood through his veins. His ragged lungs inhaled flames. But most worryingly, he was losing control of his senses.

His hearing had faded first. The clanging cloister bells drowned in silence, only to be replaced with a deafening white noise; the last memory of sound. Then his sight of the world had dissipated into nothing, plunging them into darkness. He was acutely aware that he could be millimetres away from a death trap at any moment.

The only thing left was a faint sense of touch – the feel of the Doctors fingers, as he trailed behind him. It was the only thing left he could rely on to be sure he was running in the right direction. To be sure he _was_ still running.

He had never felt so useless. So helplessly dependent upon another. He just prayed that the Doctor wouldn't give up now.

He was fighting for his life.

And there was no way Charlie would allow the Doctor to fight alone.


	15. The Doctor Falls

_Wham!_

A shock of electricity jump started his heart.

He could see again. He could hear!

The strange, shuffling, scuttling sounds were almost overwhelming; it seemed to belong to the black, viscous river ebbing and flowing around him, trying to drag him away.

"Come on, Charlie," the Doctor urged. "Your brave heart almost gave out for a second there. But it's fine. We're fine. We've almost made it."

"Where…? Wait…" Charlie faltered; the sensation of the river crawling up his legs snatched his attention away.

That was when he realised that, no – the 'river' wasn't a liquid. And it was most definitely alive. It was a swarm of tiny spiders, pulsing and throbbing with every heartbeat, charging over one another with incredible speed.

"We're following _them?_ " Charlie uttered.

"That's right."

They were wading against a metaphorical torrent of miniscule arachnids – which could only mean one thing in the Doctor's mind:

"It's leading us straight to the source of the venom?" Charlie realised.

The Doctor smiled, pushing through a sudden spasm of pain – which he was doing his best to mask.

However, Charlie could see the Doctor's skin peeking through his ragged sleeves. His veins were almost completely black. They snaked up his arms, and were creeping up his neck; the cruel fingers of venom coiling around his throat.

"Doctor," Charlie spoke up, raising his voice above the roar of the cascading spiders, "I have to ask you something."

The Doctor paused, and turned back.

"I don't understand," Charlie began.

A puzzled frown from the Doctor, as he met his eyes.

"I don't understand how you keep going. When there are so many nightmares inside your head. How do you keep going when you lose the things you care about?"

The Doctor smiled, sadly.

"Warm summers days. The smell of freshly cut apple grass. Fish and chips. Tellurian tea, and the odd bit of rock music."

"Seriously Doctor," Charlie interrupted. He was tired of the endless variations of _'cheer up'_ and _'it'll get better'_.

"I am being serious," the Doctor insisted. "I care about the universe. I think you do too, and I don't think you're ready to give up on it."

Charlie sighed.

"There's something coming for us, Charlie," the Doctor spoke gravely. "Something feeding on my mind – darkness. It snakes and weaves through my memories, following us through every nightmare…"

Charlie nodded – he could feel it too, gnawing away at their shared consciousness.

The Doctor stepped back towards him. "You're afraid of something, Charlie. There's something going on inside your head. I don't know what it is, but I want to help you."

Charlie glanced up at the Doctor, trying to rein in his pleading eyebrows.

"Really?"

"Of course." The Doctor broke into a warm smile. "I…"

He stopped, as the ground began trembling.

The spiders were stirring.

The Doctor reached out to Charlie in alarm – but they were drifting too far apart. It was as though the ground, submerged beneath the waves of spiders, and was breaking away; dispersing, like melting chunks of iceberg.

"You need to-" the Doctor's urgent cry was cut short, when the spiders rose up, engulfing him in a twisting vortex of scurrying Arachnids. Then, as the column collapsed, Charlie knew he was gone.

"No! Doctor!" Charlie yelled.

In real time, the Doctor was dying. It was only Charlie's one human heart sustaining them both. He had seconds left to save him, before he flatlined.

Charlie could feel the weight of everlasting darkness closing in around him.

This was death.

It was terrifying.

The claustrophobic squeeze as the last of your breaths are stolen from you, and you're left with the feeling – an inkling, perhaps – that life should have been so much more. _You_ could have been so much more.

But this wasn't important.

Charlie fought against a tidal wave of the creatures, threatening to knock him down, drown him, too.

One thought kept him strong: he needed to save him.

 _Save him…_

* * *

He gasped suddenly – without control, as though the air had been forced into his lungs.

He collapsed to the floor. His heart was burning. Charlie struggled to right himself, but his arms barely held the strength to lift him.

Nate appeared before him, descending from the darkness in a blaze of light, like some heavenly messenger. He stood unaffected by the tumbling Arachnids.

"The Doctor is dead," the holographic figure informed him.

It was a statement of fact. With its utterance, Charlie's hope was extinguished.

"What… No! No, he can't be! I have to save…" the words tumbled out, falling into a empty void.

Nate crouched down beside him. "Charlie. The body of a Time Lord is a product of millennia of genetic engineering. You have moments left, but you can still save the Doctor. Destroy the arachnid venom, and his body will do the rest."

Nate reached out to him, and Charlie was able to force himself to stand, even though his legs were still shaking.

"What… what about you?"

The bright light that flickered around Nate's form faded for a moment.

"You forget, I am the Doctor's TARDIS. A broken museum piece. So he thought."

Charlie threw the ethereal figure an expression of confusion. It was all he could manage to communicate.

"A TARDIS holds many secrets. Many more than you or the Doctor. I hold secrets from the past _and_ the future.

"The truth is, I was not broken. I was waiting for him. Because he's the only one who can see it: there is far more at stake beyond these four dimensions."

Nate – the TARDIS interface - took a step back. Charlie followed.

"The Doctor must not be allowed to choose death. This is why you must not fail now."

The TARDIS' words were ominous. Charlie felt the weight, the pressure of the responsibility the TARDIS was forcing upon him.

"You have to succeed, or the Doctor will fall. If the Doctor falls, the universe will too. Something is coming, which threatens everything. We need the Doctor alive."

Charlie didn't think he had the energy to work out what was happening. Amongst the constant mantra of _'Save the Doctor'_ , he had a few seconds to process what the TARDIS was telling him.

He had realised right at the start of his travels with the Doctor that the TARDIS was alive, sentient even. But it had never occurred to him that the Doctor's ship had plans of its own. A hidden agenda.

"Does the Doctor know this?"

Nate shook his head. "No. You will not tell him."

Charlie kept following Nate, their eyes locked together, keeping his attention away from the vicious pull of the Arachnid swarms.

"Does he know you can talk?"

"I cannot."

"Uh…?"

"I cannot talk," Nate stated, shrugging away the question.

"When you succeed, Charlie, I'll restore your neural pathways," he informed him. "I'll have to reverse the changes I made - otherwise your mind will burn up. You won't remember anything from this little escapade. It's a bit unfair, I know."

Charlie tried to respond, but he could no longer catch a breath. He wanted to argue. He didn't want to forget everything - he was just starting to truly understand the Doctor. Understand why he was a renegade of Gallifrey. Why he will never stop wandering the universe, helping people. Why he's done some of the terrible things he has done.

But really, more than anything, he just wanted to hold onto one thought: that the Doctor _would_ help him.

"Just be careful," Nate warned, "I know you have good intentions, but what you're doing is dangerous. I believe… I believe you'll do the right thing."

Riddles. The TARDIS was speaking in riddles. Saying one thing which could have a dozen meanings.

Nate flickered, holographic atoms falling apart, dispersing in a hypnotic dance, before fizzling out.

"No, wait!" Charlie wheezed, trying to grasp the vanishing atoms. It was a futile effort.

Through the stardust, he saw the old man.

As he pulled himself closer, Charlie saw that the old man was sitting in a throne of Arachnid bones, which coiled around him, gripping his frail limbs – more a cage than a seat of honour.

Charlie didn't recognise the man, his features buried within folds of cracked parchment-skin. He wasn't the Doctor, or one of his past incarnations.

There were cables protruding from the old man's body, emerging from rusted metal sockets and morphing into a jet of tiny Arachnids. Somehow, this man represented the source of the Arachnid venom in the Doctor's mind. He had to be.

Charlie was close enough to hear him now.

"She's here…" he kept mumbling, "She's here… she's here…"

He wasn't sure what the man's wheezes meant. Charlie peered around him, unsure what to do, but certain this is where he was meant to be. Why else would the TARDIS lead him here?

He tentatively clasped one of the thick cables sprouting from the old man's skull, ignoring the uncomfortable prickling of the spiderlings scratching his palms. As he pulled it out, the stream of spiders crumbled and died.

It was working.

He climbed around the bone cage, wrenching the cables from their sockets, arcs of green electricity snapping at him in protest. He pulled out every sprouting source of the venom he could find.

Was this it? Was the nightmare ending? Had he saved the Doctor?

The old man's sunken eyes gazed fearfully over Charlie's shoulder. He had seen something. Charlie turned to look.

He knew instantly what it was. He had always known. It had always been a part of his nightmares, but he had never fully realised it before.

"Oh, no," he whimpered, scarcely able to believe his eyes. "No, no, no…"

She was here.

Charlie gasped, staggering backwards. His limbs had seized up. There were tendrils curling around his face and around his neck, grasping him ever tighter, throttling him. His fingers, numb with shock, grappled uselessly with the coils.

"Charlie. Charlie!" the Doctor voice urged, "It's okay. I've got you."

The Doctor gently plucked the headset from him, untangling the mass of wires from around his body.

Charlie picked out the words 'left' and 'right' etched into the arms of the headset, before they swam back into the weird circular etchings that he recognised to be the Gallifreyan language.

There was a weird sensation: a crackling, snowy field of static obscuring his vision, boring into his eyes, boiling his brain. It quickly dissipated when the Doctor clasped the sides of his head.

He was in the TARDIS. He was back in the TARDIS. He'd escaped from the Doctor's mind, and he was alive!

"You're okay," the Doctor muttered, staring intently into Charlie's unfocussed eyes. "You're okay now."

"You didn't change," Charlie croaked, acknowledging the Doctor's aged features.

"No need," the Doctor said with a warm smile, "The Arachnid venom was completely eradicated from my system, thanks to you and the TARDIS."

"You didn't change…" Charlie repeated needlessly, his head nodding as he fought to remain in this reality. In this still moment in time, where the Doctor was alive and well, and they were not alone.

"It's all right," the Doctor assured him. "Get some rest."

Charlie was exhausted, and he found himself effortlessly obeying the Doctor's words. The TARDIS slipped away, and he closed his eyes.

 _"You won't remember anything…"_

 _No!_ Charlie's conscious mind protested. He couldn't forget. He had to remember that the Doctor…

 _"Won't remember…"_

He cursed the TARDIS. It couldn't do this to him. It couldn't make him forget…

What _had_ happened? _How_ had he saved the Doctor? What had the Doctor said? It was something important, be he could no longer recall it.

The soothing feeling washing over him whispered ideas to him. _It didn't matter. Don't worry about it. Everything's going to be okay._

The events were slipping away from him. Like a dream.

Dream…


	16. Never Looking Back

"Found it," the Doctor called to him.

Charlie looked up, and realised that he was sitting in a field of tall grass, perched on the edge of a muddy bank.

A small stream, a couple of inches deep, trickled playfully over a pebbled basin.

Charlie ran his fingers through his hair as he tried to recall how he had arrived here.

And where were they now? This was always the problem with the Doctor – you were somewhere new every few days. Sometimes every couple of hours. Was this was an alien world, or somewhere on Earth? Charlie thought it best to ask, rather than keep wondering.

"We're on Earth," the Doctor answered, digging about in the river. "Not far from where you live."

The Doctor didn't notice Charlie's puzzled expression.

 _Really?_ Because Charlie didn't recognise this place.

Noticing the Doctor's boots, placed neatly side by side on the patch of flattened grass next to him, Charlie realised the Time Lord was standing in the stream, his trousers rolled up above his ankles.

The Doctor grabbed something, and splashed about, causing far more ripples in the water than Charlie would have thought necessary.

"Those Gumblejacks are always getting in the way."

"Gumblejacks?" Charlie questioned.

The Doctor paused, and considered this for a moment. "No, you're right. You don't get Gumblejacks in these parts."

The Doctor picked something out of the water, and sifted the clammy dirt through his fingers.

Then, he was by Charlie's side – on dry land, his palm outstretched.

"Found it," he said again. The Doctor's voice was harsh, serious.

Charlie's eyes almost popped out of his skull.

It couldn't be!

The Doctor was presenting that padlock key to him. The key to a box stored under his bed. The one that kept everything locked away.

"There," the Doctor growled, "Now you can tell me… everything."

"What…?"

Charlie looked up into the Doctor's wide, piercing eyes.

"Who's Nate?" he demanded.

The Doctor couldn't know. He was certain the Doctor wouldn't like it if he found out the truth.

"This can't be happening. This can't be real!"

It wasn't.

It was a dream. It was another dream.

Charlie's insides began to boil. He'd had enough of dreams. Dreams that lied. Dreams that tried to kill you. Dreams that showed him things that he really didn't want to see.

He stood up, ready to confront the Doctor – an action which lifted him out of the dream, and dropped him back into a seat in the TARDIS.

The Doctor was staring at him, his thick, grey brows contorted with worry.

"Another nightmare?"

"No," Charlie quickly responded. "Not really."

The Doctor pulled a face, indicating he didn't really believe him. His expression was so alien, Charlie had to look away.

"I'm just not sure what's real anymore."

"Aren't colours just different wavelengths of light?" the Doctor suggested brightly, "It's how your eye perceives it that determines what you see."

He frowned, peering into the pulsating Time Rotor. "Reality's just what your mind stitches together…" he muttered.

The words seemed familiar, but Charlie couldn't think who had said them.

He felt that this was something quite important – but couldn't recall what it might have been.

It was like one of those moments where you're in the middle of a sentence, and you can't think of the exact word you want to say. You end up staring blankly at whoever you were talking to, whilst your brain thumbs desperately through a thesaurus.

It was frustrating, so Charlie distracted himself by pulling out his phone.

There were a few notifications, indicating he'd missed a couple of calls. He showed it to the Doctor.

"Do you know this number?"

The Doctor glanced at it.

"Ah yes. It's Simmons'. You remember her - from UNIT? I tried to call you a couple of times when we were on the Moonbase."

Charlie rubbed his jaw. The adventure had seemed like it was so long ago.

"You weren't answering. I guess you were a little… tied up at the time," the Doctor quipped.

"Very funny," Charlie muttered cynically, recalling his incarceration in a cocoon of Arachnid webbing.

The Doctor was unable to contain his grin, and he started chuckling.

Despite everything, Charlie couldn't resist. The Doctor's laughter was weirdly contagious, and he found himself smiling too.

"Yes," the Doctor decided.

"What?"

"Yes, I've made up my mind," the Doctor muttered, diving into his jacket.

He pressed something into Charlie's palm. It was a key.

Charlie's stomach lurched, suddenly recalling that strange little dream.

It wasn't the key he had feared, but a TARDIS key.

"You've earned it," the Doctor said gently.

Charlie looked up at him in disbelief.

"Not many people get one of these, you know," the Doctor stated proudly. "Although, I always forget to ask for them back. Never seems appropriate. So I suppose there _are_ quite a few knocking about."

Charlie couldn't stop staring at the key.

This meant… this meant… the Doctor actually _wanted_ him to be here. He actually wanted Charlie to travel in the TARDIS with him.

The Doctor nudged him gently. "That means you're a full-time adventurer now. If you want the job…"

Charlie grinned, his mind reeling. What could he say to thank the Doctor? Thank him for taking him on this extraordinary adventure?

 _Nah_ … Charlie smiled wryly.

"I'm cool with that."

* * *

 **Author's Notes  
**

 **The Twelfth Doctor and Charlie will return-**

* * *

 **++INCOMING MESSAGE FROM: _The Voice of Unreason_ ++**

Wait, you mean there's more? Haven't you had enough yet?

* * *

 **Author's Notes**

 **Ah, this chap. The strange fictional character that's been invading all my _Author's Notes_ sections. It's been incredibly distracting. It will of course stop existing now that this story's over.**

* * *

 ** _The Voice of Unreason_**

What? No! Nooooo!

*Epic villain wail*

*Dissipates into nothingness*

* * *

 **Author's Notes**

 **Yeah. Well, that was weird. It won't be happening again.**

 **Anyways…**

 **Thanks for reading and reviewing - it's always very much appreciated. I hope you'll continue to follow my Twelfth Doctor Adventures. I still have a few more stories for the Doctor and Charlie yet...  
**


End file.
